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PREACHERS AND PREACHING IN 
DETROIT 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


https ://archive.org/details/preacherspreachiOOpier 


Preachers 


and 


Preaching in Detroit 





EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION 
AND LIFE- SKETCHES BY 


RALPH MILTON PTERCE, D.D. 


Minister, Grand River Methodist Episcopal 
Church, Detroit, Michigan 





New York CHICAGO 


Fleming H. Revell Company 


LONDON AND EDINBURGH 


Copyright, MCMXXvI, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 


New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago: 17 North Wabash Ave. 
London: 21 Paternoster Square 
Edinburgh: 75 Princes Street 


IMs 
A PREACHER FATHER, 
William Richards Pierce, D.D. 


“A man sent from God.” 





VIII. 


XIII. 


. TYRANT SERVANTS. (Mark 2:27) 


. LIVING THE ImMortay Lire. (Luke 10:28) 


CONTENTS 


INTRODUCTIONMI sy Mai iil. 
Ralph Milton Pierce 


. Tue Grrt oF Peace. (Phil. 4:7) 


Gaius Glenn Atkins 


. THE Patriotic CuurcH. (No test) 


George *Brewer 


. REDEEMING THE TIME. (Eph. 5:15-16) . 


Chester B. Emerson 


. Future Monarcus. (Matt. 5:5) 


John Wellington Hoag 


. THE Heer, or Acuinyes. (J Cor. 10:12) 


Lynn Harold Hough 


. Imitation oF Curist. (Luke 23:34) 


Edgar DeWitt Jones 


. TRAITS OF THE Reticious Sour. (JI Cor. 4) . 


Alvin E,. Magary 


CoMING GIANTS AND THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE 
Future. (Gen. 6:4) . 
S. S. Marquis 


. THE Eyks of a Younc Man. (JI Kings 6:17) . 


Minot C. Worgan 


Reinhold Neibuhr 


. KEEPING THE Propuet Anive. (1 Kings 17:13). 


Arthur Lee Odell 


Augustus P. Reccord 


Curist Is Risen. (J Cor. 15:20) 
C. H. Ruesskamp 


7 


83 \ 


95% 


109 }"" 


Snes hag til 


135 


. 149 


163 


Ae oA." 


1187 


XIX. 


CONTENTS 


Robert Wilham Woodroofe 


. Brook AND Barret. (J Kings 17:16) 203 
Merton S. Rice 
. BEHOLD, THE SOWER. (Matt. 13:3). 219 
Warren L. Rogers 
. THat THry Micut Know Him. (John 17:3) . 233 
Mark F. Sanborn 
. ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LiFe. (Acts 13:48) . 247 
William L. Stidger 
. THE CHRISTIAN AS A_ VICTORIOUS PERSON- 
ALITY. CLEMO ONE ie Td) 263 
Robert White 
THE Master’s Compassion. (Mark 6:34). . 275 


INTRODUCTION 


This book is being printed and offered to seekers 
after the good things of God. It is not parochial; but 
has a widely extended mission. There is no thought of 
attempting a systematic treatise on Christianity. The 
sermons included represent no particular school of 
doctrine concerning the things of the spirit; but they 
do represent the great preaching which obtains in this 
notable and growing metropolis. 

The city of Detroit is known widely as an industrial 
and commercial town, with myriads of huge and grimy 
smokestacks belching their black dust up against the 
dark blue and painting with sooty letters ‘“‘ Modern 
Efficiency ” across the sky. There is much talk about 
the rapid growth of the city, striding ahead every year 
by scores of thousands. But greatness does not con- 
sist in material splendor any more today than it did 
with Caliph Aberrahman III of Spain, nor does it con- 
sist in size any more than it did in the days of Nineveh. 
Detroit is ‘‘ The Dynamic City ” in the sense that it is | 
one of the world centers of trade and manufacture; 
but the spiritual elements in her life are even more 
worthy of serious thought and appreciation, for ‘‘ back 
of the mill is the sun and the shower and the Heavenly 
Father’s good will.” | 

Great churches abound here; and multitudes attend 
the divine services. A strong emphasis has been placed 


9 


10 INTRODUCTION 


upon evangelism—a stirring and wholesome evangelism 
which is not incompatible with religious education and 
the prophetic spirit. Laymen and preachers alike have 
been faithful to this trust, lifting up Jesus Christ as the 
Lord of all men and as the Lord of every phase of hu- 
man life. In picking up the Saturday night newspapers 
one does not find the startling array of non-descript ser- 
mon subjects which once blotted the page and brought 
contempt on religion. Some do look upon religion as a 
circus and the church as a menagerie; but in most cases 
there is an infallible note of seriousness and a com- 
manding emphasis on the eternal, assisting men in 
the strange discovery of the quiet dignity, the en- 
nobling motives, and the timeless summons which 
religion offers to humanity in this perplexed and 
ungrounded age. 

Another element which makes for success is the 
notable spirit of co-operation which exists among the 
churches. This fine spirit of unity exhibits itself in 
the remarkable Lenten and Good Friday services; in 
the city wide summer and winter evangelistic cam- 
paigns; in the daily-vacation Bible schools; and in the 
Theater meetings in the Fall. The kindly Christian 
graces and administrative leadership of Dr. Morton C. 
Pearson, city secretary of the Council of Churches, 
and of the denominational Superintendents have had 
large part in this noble expression of united mind and 
endeavor. 

Nearly four hundred Protestant preachers are pro- 
claiming the Good News every Sunday in Detroit. 
With unusual ability and serious application to their 


RALPH MILTON PIERCE 11 


high tasks, these men are calling multitudes to the 
quiet places of prayer and praise. No measure can be 
given to the moral and spiritual impact made on the 
city by these men of God; no limit can be placed upon 
the value of this sacrificial service. 

Standing at the head of this notable list are several 
preachers of international or national renown. Per- 
haps no city in America holds so many outstanding 
preachers within her borders. These men of letters 
and of the spirit do more than bring great prophecies 
to their own people. They constantly challenge every 
other preacher to do his best in the name of Christ. 
It is a unique privilege to preach under such demand- 
ing inspiration. 

What Victor Hugo said of his day is a serious sum- 
mons to modern America: 

“The age is great and strong. Her chains are riven. 

K * ok * * 


Mid the vast splendour of an age that glows, 
One thing, O Jesus, fills my breast with terror; 
The echo of His voice still feebler grows.” 


The seemingly insuperable weight of the city, with 
its multitude of folks, its congested foreign quarters, 
and its attendant crime and sensuality rests like the 
burden of the Titan upon the backs and souls of men 
until the spiritual is well nigh crushed out. And so the 
eternal task of the preacher is to remind men of God— 
a loving, demanding, persuading God; to make real 
such a God to the thinking of men; and to re-emphasize 
the fact which Browning has so well put: “ Progress is 
the law of life; man is not man as yet.” 


12 INTRODUCTION 


What a tremendous task it is “‘ to let God see that 
you at least are a sound workman, with no need to be 
ashamed of the way you handle the word of Truth.” 

Paul Elmer More is quite right in his statements 
that the cure for democracy is not more democracy 
- but better democracy and that the need is to provide 
for a natural aristocracy. Such is the task of the 
preacher. He is dedicated to the proposition of build- 
ing up a vanguard in civilization which will lead the 
mass of the people out into the higher and larger life. 
His task is to put spiritual motive and spiritual power 
into present day leadership. There is a lesson in the 
parable of the Sower which is not always stressed. 
The lesson is that the good ground will bear a rich 
harvest, and that we should plant the seed of Truth in 
fertile soil. We talk about saving the world for Christ; 
and our missionary program is never cut large enough, 
whether it be home or foreign missions. 

But before we can save the world, we must save 
America. No word of caution is more needed in this 
superficial day than this,—we must not become blind 
leaders of the blind, lest through our false leadership 
all peoples fall into the ditch of materialism. Right 
now America needs the Idealism of Jesus, and she will 
never be won to Him except the mind of her leaders is 
sought and won over to His principles and spirit. The 
preacher who fails to capture the mind of the com- 
munity for Christ is signally failing in the great enter- 
prise, for he is failing to utilize the good ground for the 
seed of God’s word. On the other hand, the man who, 
in the wise strategy of the Kingdom, reaches out and 


RALPH MILTON PIERCE 13 


up to the high thought levels of far-visioned men and 
presents the claims.of Christ in modern thought forms, 
will multiply Christ’s influence many fold. The spir- 
itual multiplication table is a truly marvelous affair, 
for one against one in the spiritual realm is often one 
hundred and frequently one thousand when Christ is 
the first one and a thoughtful, reverent constructive 
leader is the other one. 

The veteran temptations which environ the modern 
day preacher are legion. The one which besets most 
powerfully today is the temptation to give way to the 
tyranny of tradition and to make as absolute truth for 
all time the beliefs and ideals of the fathers. After all, 
openmindedness and a sense of the prerogatives of the 
future are essential tools in the ministry. The preacher 
who attempts to dry up the source streams of new life 
and power is recreant to his trust. The minds of men 
need to be deep-furrowed at times, that they may get 
out of the fallow into the fertile. We believe that not 
only jesting Pilate but all the world is asking the ques- 
tion, ‘‘ What is truth? ” Certain it is that we get on 
toward God not by backward looking but by forward 
looking, for there is no heresy so subtle or so blighting 
as the heresy of the closed mind. 

The preacher of today finds himself in a period of 
transition. He is in the midst of the renewal of hostil- 
ity between science and established creed, such as 
raged in England in the middle of the nineteenth cen- 
tury. At that time Lord Tennyson entered into the 
conflict by accepting the modern current of thought; 
and, for his stand, he has been called “the poet of 


14 INTRODUCTION 


compromise,” which is an unfortunate term to be used 
in connection with one who wrote “ In Memoriam.” 
Tennyson gave to his generation an interpretation of 
the higher things of life in the thought forms that were 
modern and in accord with the intelligence standard of 
his time. A careful study of the teachings of Jesus 
will reveal that He followed this method with His dis- 
ciples. And so the man who would reveal God to men 
in this day must accommodate his message to the mind 
of his hearers; and he must realize the right of the 
mind of humanity to change and grow in its appreci- 
ation of the truth of all life. Using the word ‘ com- 
promise ” in the sense of an appreciation of new and 
higher values, it would be right to say that the man 
who proclaims the Word of God in this changing period 
must be not only a preacher of insight but also a 
preacher of compromise. 

Another temptation would lead preachers to shape 
their ministry according to the will of the people. 
This is a critical age; and many preachers are suc- 
cumbing to the demand of human voices, becoming 
mere spokesmen of men and not prophets of God with 
a distinct spiritual charism. How often the modern 
pulpit pitches its note to the traditions of the fathers, 
pleasing the ear of the congregation but failing to lift 
the souls of men to God. 

The third temptation would rob a man of his right 
to give pre-eminent place in his own thinking to the 
spoken message. There are other things which a min- 
ister should do; but this one thing he must do well. 
In this day of efficiency there is a temptation which 


RALPH MILTON PIERCE 15 


would rob the preacher of his right to think deeply of 
life’s problems and privileges and to carry an imperial 
message with an imperial voice. It would deprive him 
of preaching compelling sermons by making him a me- 
chanical supervisor of the social side of the Church 
and a busy counselor in civic affairs. Every true 
preacher follows Christ in these words: ‘ For their 
sake I sanctify myself.” In this he dedicates his ut- 
most powers to make every sermon ring out as the 
voice of God to heart-burdened men. System needs to 
obtain in the Church as well as elsewhere, and there is 
a real demand for administration in ecclesiastical af- 
fairs; but system without spirit is vain, and adminis- 
tration without the clarion voice is powerless. 

The sermons which are written here come from the 
pens of busy men. Placed before every sermon is the 
Driving Motive of the writer. In brief and trenchant 
phrase he reveals the secret of his ministry, the source 
of his power, the faith that holds him to his task, and 
the objective of his life service. Practically every man 
is in charge of a great church in this tremendous city 
which is a tangled web of human triumph and despair. 
It is also well to note that only men in the active pas- 
torate have been selected for this book. 

Against insuperable odds these men have kept to the 
high levels of spiritual vision, and have felt for them- 
selves as well as for others the tanging sense of spir- 
itual power. They have been selected as worthy repre- 
sentatives from the many effective preachers in Detroit, 
who have established themselves as denominational or 
interdenominational leaders. Looking from without, 


16 INTRODUCTION 


men are bound to notice with considerable interest the 
unusual group of younger preachers in our pulpits. 
Their voices are now being heard with acceptability 
and with increasing effectiveness. Many of them are 
fast becoming outstanding preachers in this day. 

One will find here the motive and momentum for 
living the larger life in Jesus. A careful search will 
disclose no denominational over-emphasis, no petty 
quibbling over minor matters, no waste of thought 
over differences in belief. On-the contrary, there is a 
major emphasis placed upon the everlasting verities, 
making the book a positive demonstration in Christian 
unity and spiritual solidarity. Here we have Jesus 
presented as the divine Son of God—God incarnate in 
human flesh, revealing to humanity not the physical 
power, but the spiritual glow and moral splendor of a 
God suffering for His creation, and calling it to the 
high ground of moral and spiritual allegiance to Him. 
Here we have Jesus portrayed as the hope of humanity, 
the light and life of the world. 


RALPH MILTON PIERCE. 


Grand River Ave. Methodist Church. 
Detroit, Michigan. 


GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 


Dr. Atkins holds a unique place in the life of Detroit ; 
he belongs to the whole city. The great church in which 
he ministers with much grace, wisdom, and strength is 
situated on Woodward Avenue, ‘“‘ Where cross the 
crowded ways of life;’ but the greater church of his 
noble ministry is the city itself. Like several of the out- 
standing preachers in America, he studied for the profes- 
sion of law, graduating from the Cincinnati School of 
Law. Later he studied at Yale Divinity School, and en- 
tered the ministry of the Congregational Church in 1895. 
New England claimed him for his first two pastorates ; 
and, after four years in the First Congregational Church 
in Detroit, called him back to Providence, R. I., where he 
ministered with unusual favor from 1910 to 1917. Since 
that time he has occupied the pulpit at First Church; and 
his ministry has grown with the years. Dr. Atkins has 
added a keen spiritual insight to a marked literary and 
forensic ability. He is more than a mystic; he is a prophet 
with moral fervor and a deep underlying motive for ser- 
vice. The several books which he has written are widely 
read by laymen and preachers. Perhaps the greatest con- 
tribution made to the study of the various aspects of mod- 
ern religion has been made by him in his book, “ Modern 
Religious Cults and Movements,” written with a quiet 
appeal to careful reason and without petty intolerance. 
In reading this sermon, full of imagination, insight, and 
poetry, one easily discovers the secret of his eminent suc- 
cess in the ministry of our Lord. 


THE PREACHER AS PROPHET—The late Bishop 
Charles D. Williams said that the Christian preacher con- 
tinues the offices of the Hebrew prophets and the Greek 
Rhetor. The latter, in the first and second centuries, made 
a business of finished and winning public speaking for the 
delectation of his hearers. The Hebrew prophet was for 
his race and time the votce of God. As the two lines of 
intellectual and spwitual descent were fused and reborn 
in patristic Christianity, preaching took over the character- 
istics of both, and the ethical and spiritual passton and 
practical address of the prophet was given something of 
the art and form of classic address. And this should still 
be the preacher's ideal and the test of worthy preaching. 
But the prophetic note and spirit are fundamental—that 
1s the substance, the rest 1s garmenture. 

The preacher as a prophet is the tnterpreter of the 
Divine meanings of the eddying currents of the individual 
life, or the massive sweep of the vaster human enterprise. 
He seeks to establish conduct in the solidity of duty, in- 
form character with God-given goodness, kindle the fire of 
loving Good JV ill on the altars of the mner life, and make 
it the law and force of all human relationships. He ts 
to reason of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to 
come, and hold up the Cross of Christ as the revelation of 
the method of redemption which is no detached transac- 
tion in the Godhead, but a saving particspation of the love 
of God tn all the deeply shadowed aspects of our souls and 
our society, and to establish men in that sense of the pres- 
ence and power of God, which is the secret of all peace, 
the ground of all our hope; and this is the greatest task 
to which any man may be called —Gaius GLENN ATKINS. 


I 
THE GIFT OF PEACE 


GAIUS GLENN ATKINS, D.D. 
First Congregational Church 


“The peace of God which passeth all understanding, keep your 
hearts and minds, through Jesus Christ.’—Puit, 4:7. 


This text belongs to that high fellowship of texts 
from which there is really no preaching. The great 
benedictions and ascriptions are guarded, as were the 
gates of the forbidden garden, by swords of flame 
which the preacher challenges at his peril; and as if 
that were not enough the Apostle adds here a phrase 
which should arrest any preacher—‘ which passeth 
understanding.” 

But this benediction of St. Paul has, for all its mystic, 
brooding quality, a central solidity; and, because it is 
concerned with the greatest quest to which we are com- 
mitted, we may inquire into its meaning though we con- 
fess at the same time that it carries a range of meaning 
beyond any power of ours to inquire into. 

There are words which call us always as from afar, 
words which carry, could we once come at the realities 
which lie behind them, some final answer to all our 
quests; but there is hardly anywhere such a word to 
move and command us as the word “ peace.” We are 
all in some fashion or other seeking peace, whether by 


19 


20 THE GIFT OF PEACE 


our own hearthstones when the day’s work is done, or 
in our own souls when we have mastered our spiritual 
foes, or in the contacts of the nations themselves. Our 
very restlessness is rooted in our search therefor. If 
you should ask a hundred different men and women 
what they are really seeking, they will give you a hun- 
dred different answers. They will tell you that they 
are seeking pleasure, or profit, or a livelihood, or power, 
or forgetfulness, or knowledge, or righteousness, or 
salvation. But they are really seeking some inner or 
outer peace, some reconciliation of all the forces by 
which they are drawn or driven in a satisfaction great 
enough to quiet their restless spirits. When, there- 
fore, a teacher like St. Paul, rich in manifold experi- 
ence, undertakes to tell us—though his assurance be at 
the same time a benediction—the secret of an all- 
sufficient and enduring peace, he is answering a uni- 
versal need of the human spirit. 


I 


He goes high or deep—no matter which—for the 
secret of it, and tells us in plain words what we are 
always forgetting: that we shall find peace not in con- 
quest but in surrender, not by creation but by appro- 
priation. Peace, he says, is a gift. 

We commonly think of peace as an achievement, and 
that is true enough, for peace is really a very great 
achievement; but it is an achievement conditioned by 
obediences and insights. Or else we think of a peace 
as an accommodation between competitive forces, 
which indeed it is; but it is far more than that. Or 


GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 21 


else we think of peace as a fruit of conquest, to be 
gained by having our way with those who oppose us, 
the peace, that is, of some supreme and resolute will, 
whether it be the will of the individual or the nation, 
which has succeeded, and often enough at tragic cost, 
in breaking down all opposing wills and substituting 
for their ambitions or challenges its own high and un- 
challenged affirmations. The only trouble with this 
kind of peace is that there is nothing permanent about 
it. Once we have won it, we are not able for any long 
time to keep it, and so we are always fighting for it and 
always losing it. There is a better way than that. 

I have no mind to consider, to begin with, the more 
common applications of the word, such as industrial or 
international peace; just now we are seeking for the 
roots of it in the states of the soul themselves, for we 
Shall never have peace anywhere, whether between 
embattled social groups or embattled nations, until we 
have discovered the secret of inner peace and have 
made that our departure for any further quest. 

So approached, peace is always rooted in some confi- 
dence or other. I am sitting in the room in which this 
is being written, in a reasonable sense of physical secur- 
ity because I have confidence in the floor beneath me 
and the ceiling above me and the walls which shut me 
in. If any thing should disturb these very simple con- 
fidences, I should be as restless here as Damocles was 
beneath his sword, wondering when the ceiling would 
fall or the floor give way. 

We walk abroad untroubled because the earth is sure 
beneath us and the stars maintain their ancient stations 


22 THE GIFT OF PEACE 


above us. If anything should happen to shake this 
confidence, as an earthquake, for example, which 
might at any time be repeated, or the news of an er- 
rant planet escaped from its orbit and likely to collide 
with our little world, the horizons of all our enterprises 
would be so clouded with apprehension as to make 
peace of mind impossible. We are at peace with our 
friends because we trust them. The merchant’s confi- 
dence in the integrity of those from whom he buys and 
the dependability of those to whom he sells is the secret 
of his business place. If anything should disturb this 
confidence he would be a very troubled merchant and 
likely to lie awake at night with his worries for 
company. 

Children are at peace in their fathers’ houses because 
they are kept and sheltered by their mothers’ love and 
their fathers’ safeguarding strength. The strong and 
the wise and the good are always a bulwark and a shel- 
ter for the weak or the foolish or the helpless. 

There is no need to follow such illustrations as these 
too far, though they bear directly upon St. Paul’s noble 
assurance. Peace is a gift. You possess it really be- 
cause other persons, or the great forces of the world in 
which we live, or the steadfastness of the human order 
about us, reassure us and share with us their peace. 
Each one of us is a center, as it were, around which are 
swept always widening circles of safeguarding and 
peace-affording realities. 

The stars communicate their peace to us; they as- 
sure us of a steadfast order, vast, unfailing, tranquilly 
majestic and always saying to us, “Don’t fret too 


GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 23 


much; you are living in God’s good universe wherein 
each star has its own appointed station; sunrise and 
sunset follow in blessed and dependable sequence, and 
where the changing seasons, which are themselves but 
terrestrial aspects of the cosmic order, will warm a seed 
bed for the grain you sow and ripen your harvests.” 

We are greatly in debt for what peace we possess to 
the safeguarding strength of the city we live in, the 
commonwealth to which we belong, or the nation of 
which we are citizens. All night long the streets of our 
cities are patrolled by the appointed guardians of our 
peace. The strength of the state reinforces and safe- 
guards the humblest citizens of the state. The pride 
and passion which we have for our own nation is deeply 
rooted just here, for a nation is the majestic incarnation 
of the force of all its citizens, alert and unsleeping and 
always at our service. We go abroad followed and 
sheltered by the Stars and Stripes; and, if need be, the 
entire force of the nation may be mobilized for the 
protection of a little child. 


IT 


We really find peace, then, as we appropriate in 
vaster or more intimate ways some aspect or other of 
this encompassing and assuring strength. One may 
rewrite the Apostle’s benediction and do it no despite: 
“And the peace of the home which passeth under- 
standing shall guard your hearts and minds; the peace 
of the integrity of industry shall guard your hearts 
and your minds; the peace of the city in which you 
dwell shall guard your hearts and your minds.” Or 


24: THE GIFT OF PEACE 


the peace of the commonwealth, or the peace of the 
nation beneath whose flag you walk unafraid. Peace, 
then, is always an appropriation; and the ultimate 
peace to be appropriated is the peace of God. 

The Apostle begins by telling us that this peace pass- 
eth understanding, whether in the inner experiences of 
it or in any examination of its meanings or implica- 
tions. What words of spiritual imagination or reverent 
approach shall for a moment penetrate even the fron- 
tier of the secret of the peace of God? By so much 
less may we draw near to the heart of the serenity of 
the Infinite and All-Powerful. 

One must walk here as though upon holy ground, 
with down-cast eyes, lest looking up he be blinded. 
But, for all that, we may reverently assume qualities 
as of necessity implicit in the peace of God. The peace 
of God is the peace of perfect knowledge, just as so 
much of our restlessness is the restlessness of igno- 
rance. We are always, as it were, pressing sheer 
against the curtain of the unknown; we have but to 
reach out our hands and touch it. We are always 
facing moments pregnant with unknown fortunes. 
True enough, we have, because of past experience, a 
sustaining confidence in the future. We have blessed 
reason to believe—and this is part of the sharing of 
the peace of God—that tomorrow will, in the generality 
of its experiences, repeat today; and we may plan for 
some far future without being too greatly disturbed 
about the contingencies which may interrupt or defeat 
us. We could not live with any kind of peace at all, 
or dare to plan, if we should surrender ourselves 


GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 25 


wholly to the fear of the unknown; but, for all that, 
the unknown is always there. 

We do not understand ourselves or the world we live 
in. We have at the best only broken conceptions of the 
wonder and truth of the universe and the order of it. 
The most commonplace things turn to mystery beneath 
our touch and face us with perpetual interrogation. 
The very stones by the wayside protest against our 
ignorance and the stars reproach us for what we do not 
know of their far and inaccessible distances. We do 
not know the content of our own souls, and there are 
moments when the faces of those who are nearest and 
dearest to us are veiled with some mystery. Our rest- 
lessness is rooted deeply in our passion for a perfect 
knowledge; it is always being challenged by the reach 
and quality of our ignorance. 

We may reverently assume that in the vision of God 
all things lie in perfect clarity of understanding. All 
that has been and all that shall be are gathered up in 
the compass of the Infinite vision. For Him there is 
no past beyond His Divine knowledge and no future 
veiled with mystery. The stars keep His laws; right- 
eousness is His thought, and love, as it were, the beat- 
ing of His heart. 

Now much of this is truly beyond our power clearly 
to understand. We may easily enough use words 
whose full content of meaning we can never clearly 
think through. They are words of approach, groping 
words, over-burdened words, and yet the meanings 
they carry are true and right and though the fulness 
of their meaning reaches us only as the tides of the sea 


26 THE GIFT OF PEACE 


break at our feet, with all the immensity out of which 
they come beyond our vision; still, as in the instance 
of the sea itself, what they bring to us is a true part of 
a vaster reality. Omniscience, omnipotence, omni- 
presence, are too big for us, but we must use them not- 
withstanding. To change the figure, they are search- 
light words casting here and there a penetrating and 
revealing gleam of light upon the wonder of the Divine 
nature. 

But, just as we may share the peace of the lesser 
things which surround and safeguard us we may share 
the peace of God’s infinite knowledge. And all this 
in ways so simple that a child may understand them. 
Here, as everywhere else, trust is the secret of sharing. 
Our ignorances do not so much burden us if we know 
that there is somewhere Someone who knows and cares. 
Once we are persuaded that the fortunes of life come 
to us out of God’s love and wisdom, we may truly, in 
the words of the ancient exhortation, ‘‘ cast our care 
upon Him.” The hymns we love to sing say all this 
for us better than we can say them for ourselves. 


“What Thou shalt today provide 
Let me as a child receive; 
What tomorrow may betide 
Calmly to Thy wisdom leave; 
‘Tis enough that Thou wilt care; 
Why should I the burden bear?” 


Or else we sing— 


“We know not what the path may be 
As yet by us untrod; 
But we can trust our all to Thee, 
Our Father and our God.” 


GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 27 


If the future be God’s thought for us, we need not 
fear it; if changing circumstance be the revelation of 
a loving wisdom, we may go on untroubled; if we find 
in the unfolding hours some divine purpose radiant and 
evident, we share the secret of His peace. 

We need not be too greatly concerned by the things 
we do not know. We understand enough to go on by, 
and we are living in an always growing understanding 
both of ourselves and the order of which we are a part; 
and everywhere, as we go deeper and deeper into the 
meaning of this whole order, we find law and order 
and supreme reasonableness, luminous simplicities and 
depth beyond depth of understandable things. 

The scientist may be always at peace in his labora- 
tory, the scholar may be always at peace in his quest 
for any aspect of truth. Truth is there. When we 
have found it we can understand it, when we can un- 
derstand it we can live by it, and when we have found 
it it is always a point of departure for a further and 
more rewarding search. The first gift of the peace of 
God is the capacity to resolve our ignorances in His 
infinite understanding, and rest content in what we do 
not know as well as what we do know, because He 
knows it all. 


II 


The peace of God is the peace of perfect power. We 
are more fretted by our weaknesses than by almost 
anything else. The tools we use turn in the hands that 
would master them. Every one of us is in his way 
baffled by his own helplessness and weary enough in 


28 THE GIFT OF PEACE 


the sense of burdens which he should but cannot bear, 
tasks which he should but cannot accomplish, and re- 
sults which he would but does not achieve. But there 
is neither haste nor hindrance in the outgoing power 
of the Eternal; His creative process moves through a 
plastic universe until the morning stars sing together 
for joy that they were made. Civilizations rise and 
fall, cities are built and forgotten; but God marches on. 
His is the peace of a power which knows no restraint 
save His own holiness, and realizes an absolute per- 
fection in the ultimate conception of it, a power whose 
capacity is unbelievably wide as its vision and whose 
vision is clear as its power. 

Now God shares this peace with us just insofar as we 
are conscious of being co-workers with Him; every one 
of us may go on about his own proper business in the 
assurance of reinforcements which are ample enough 
for every task. ‘‘ As thy day, so shall thy strength 
be.” I do not mean to say that we can do everything 
we want to do, or everything we try to do in the way 
we should like to do it. I do mean to say that as far 
as our own plain duty is concerned we do have strength 
enough to go on with. There is a power, not ourselves, 
which makes for righteousness and the secret of the 
ultimate triumph of righteousness is not in ourselves 
but in that power. We are, truly enough, its instru- 
ments and there is something to kindle as well as to 
awe us in the thought. God is as dependent upon us 
for the realization of the Divine purpose in the order 
of which we are a part, as we are dependent upon Him. 
But always we may go on as though marching to His 


GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 29 


music. We may await His vindication of apparently 
defeated causes, and His resolution of hopes as yet 
unfulfilled. 

These are not the words of a mystic or the vague 
statements of a dreamer. If our purposes be such as 
God may own and bless, He dowers them with His own 
power and enfranchises them by His own indwelling 
strength. Whatever strength we have is the strength 
of God, whether we work with a tempered tool or the 
forces of spiritual accomplishment or the majesty of 
the moral order. Whatever peace we have in any ac- 
complishment is His gift because in some fashion, great 
or small, we have learned to avail ourselves of His 
reinforcement and be strong in His strength. 


IV 

The peace of God is the peace of perfect unity be- 
tween will and desire. The uplands of our souls are 
swept by an ancient strife between what we are and 
what we would be, between desire and realization, be- 
tween what we will and disturbing solicitations. This 
also the Apostle Paul knew and this he has voiced in a 
cry which sounds still across the years, ‘O wretched 
man that Iam! Who shall deliver me from the body 
of this death? ” 

But may we not reverently assume that in the infi- 
nite depths of the Divine nature there is no such strife 
as that? What God wills He desires, and what He 
desires He wills, and what He wills and desires He is, 
Here, as nearly as human imagination may approach 
the secret places of the Most High, is the unapproach- 


30 THE GIFT OF PEACE 


able majesty of God. We may dare reverently to 
affirm that the profoundest peace of God is the peace 
of serene moral accomplishment. 

Now God shares this peace with us. There are 
many roads to the realization of it, the most direct of 
which is obedience to His holy will. We are slow in 
learning how so many of our perturbations, whether of 
spirit or society, are due to moral disobediences, or else 
to an embattled reluctance to obey. There are no 
regions of true peace outside the region of moral in- 
tegrity and the straight road to moral integrity is 
moral obedience. In steadfastness to duty, in the 
brave acceptance of all the challenges of righteousness 
we discover the secret of a deep and unshaken content- 
ment. More than that, such obedience is always at- 
tended by a widening range of social and economic and 
international stability. The wise and right-living have 
always known this; long ago Dante phrased it all in 
one luminous and deathless sentence: ‘‘ In His will is 
our peace.” 

We have always been feeling for this, we have 
always been telling what we have found in various 
ways. ‘The mystic has one testimony, the practical- 
minded man another, the scientist may explain it after 
his fashion and the moralist after his; but all those who 
have sought any Divine help in the moral struggle have 
found it. The Cross itself is the testimony to a saving 
and sharing love which not only shares the moral strug- 
gle with us, so assuring us of ultimate victory, but bears 
itself the pain and price of fault and failure. 

The peace of God is the peace of perfect love. So 


GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 31 


much of our restlessness is the restlessness of self- 
centered lives, over-concerned for themselves, too eager 
for self-fulfilment and self-satisfaction; but, in the 
heart of God, love broods eternal. In a divine self- 
forgetfulness which passes the power of imagination, 
in the reach of an infinite compassion of which every 
tide of love whose ripples break on any shore of time 
is only the broken expression, in such a tide of love as 
this the peace of God flows secure. 

And how shall we find any peace at all if we do not 
forget ourselves, and how shall we learn to forget our- 
selves if we are not taught of God? ‘“ Now,” says the 
Apostle, “ this peace of God which passeth understand- 
ing, the peace of perfect knowledge, the peace of per- 
fect power, the peace of perfect reconciliation, the 
peace of perfect surrender, this shall guard your hearts 
and minds through our Lord Jesus Christ.” 


V 


The word translated “ guard” is really “ garrison,” 
a word rich in the suggestion of indwelling strength. 
Our souls are to become fortresses possessed and held 
of God; and whatever assails us is to be beaten back 
helpless before His power. Ignorance challenges a 
spirit, so garrisoned, to surrender. ‘“‘ Lay down your 
arms,” it says, “‘ ye children of time, cradled in mystery 
and borne on toward strange destinies, you do not 
know the secret of the dust upon which you stand, or 
the stars which shine down upon you, or the currents 
of life which pulse through you, or the wills which 
urge you on. What peace can you know?” And the 


32 THE GIFT OF PEACE 


reinforced spirit makes answer, “I do not care; my 
Father knows and His knowledge is peace enough for 
me; my steps are guided of Him and the unfolding 
days are the revelation of His thought for me.” 

Then helplessness comes up and challenges it. 
‘‘ Surrender,” say such voices as these, “to distrust 
and fear. You are not strong enough for even the 
common tasks of life; how shall you meet the high and 
the eternal? ” And the reinforced soul makes answer, 
‘“‘T am strong in the strength of God; I am reinforced 
in His might; a viewless strength drawn from the time- 
less and the changeless are my confidence.” 

Then from within the more subtle forces make their 
appeal, the divisive qualities of life: divided wills, com- 
petitive desires—and truly these are most tenacious 
foes of all—but the reinforced spirit may turn to even 
such as these and answer, ‘‘I am not alone in my 
strife; God’s will has become my peace and in His 
strength I am strong.” Selfishness beats at the gates 
of the soul, so garrisoned; but above it the love of God 
spreads out His banner with His sign of the Cross upon 
it, and in that sign we are safe. 

‘“‘ The peace of God shall garrison your soul through 
our Lord Jesus Christ.” What is the connecting link 
between the peace of God and the troubled souls of 
men and women? Truly the incarnate Christ. He has 
bridged the gulf between the human and the divine. 
How do we know that God guides us? Through the 
assurance of His Son: “I am the way and the truth 
and the light.””, How do we know that God keeps us? 
Through His testimony, for He tells us that not even 


GAIUS GLENN ATKINS 33 


a sparrow falls to the ground unnoted by an infinite 
love. How do we know that we are the object of a 
divine concern? Because He has told us that God so 
loved the world as to give—. How shall we make all 
this real in our own lives? Most truly in that disciple- 
ship of Jesus Christ which is faith and surrender and 
love and self-discovery and the assurance of dear- 
bought salvation. 

Those who have found such a door as this as a way 
of nearness to the Divine, though they be much beset, 
without and within, do possess the peace of God which 
passeth understanding, and become living sources from 
which some widening and transforming tide of peace is 
always flowing out to give to all our fellowships a new 
quality and establish us, as it were, in the everlasting 
arms. 


PRAVER 


O Thou, in Whose wall is our peace, grant unto us, Thy 
children, much beset withn by the strife of our own 
divided souls, and besieged without by the assault of un- 
friendly circumstances, the gift of Thy peace. May we 
find deliverance from our tgnorance as we commit all our 
ways to Thy wisdom; may Thy undergirding strength 
bear us up in all our weakness, Thy loving goodness give 
serenity and strength to our halting purposes, and Thy 
love subdue our selfishness till our fretting concern for 
ourselves 1s lost in holy affectson for others. And may 
Thy pardon quiet our consciences as Thy mercy is mind- 
ful of our troubled estate. We ask tt all in Hts name who 
is Thy Peace drawn near to save and bless us—even Jesus 
Christ, our Lord. Amen. 


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GEORGE BREWER 


Dr. Brewer was born in Kingston, Ontario. On coming 
to the United States in his youth he became naturalized, 
and was educated at Wooster University, McCormick, and 
Princeton Theological Seminaries, being graduated from 
the latter in 1905. In that year he was ordained to the 
Presbyterian ministry in Columbus, Ohio. From the be- 
gining he has occupied prominent pulpits, including the 
First Presbyterian Churches of Columbus and Coshocton, 
Ohio, and of Duluth, Minnesota. ‘The Grosse Pointe Pres- 
byterian Church, situated in the finest residential section of 
Detroit, has called him recently. The notable thing in his 
ministry is the earnestness, frankness, and sincere courage 
with which he prosecutes his work. His ministry in 
Detroit has been positive and practical; and his preaching 
has always been informing, forceful, and inspiring, put- 
ting the gospel of Jesus to work amid the intricate and 
troublesome problems of human life. This sermon, which 
is an example of the preaching at Grosse Pointe, lifts 
Christ up before men, and does not fail to point out the 
requirements of life and service which must be met and 
fulfilled by a Christian church. There is great hope for 
our nation when men catch such a vision and preach such 
a gospel. There is one remedy for the distress of men 
and institutions ; it is the greater patriotism of love, which 
Jesus taught. May God raise up a Patriotic Church, such 
as this sermon calls for. 


PREACH CHRIST—Dr. Jowett expressed the holy 
ambition of all true ministers when he satd, “I have but 
one passion, the absorbingly arduous, yet glorious work 
of proclaiming the gospel of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus 
Christ.’ But how shall we proclaim that gospel? Dr. 
Patton says, “It 1s no easy task to bring high truths home 
to moving picture minds in a day when so many have 
transferred their worship from the Infinite to the indefi- 
nite.’ Dr. Dods said before his death, “I do not envy 
those who have to fight the battle of Christianity m the 
Twentieth Century.” Then after a moment he added, 
“Ves, perhaps I do; but ut will be a stiff fight.’ It ts a 
stiff fight, and a fight that in stself reveals the world’s need 
of the gospel. Therefore, I firmly believe that the hour 
has come when preachers must consign to the flames their 
learned lectures based on a text, but shrewdly concealed 
ina mixture of German rationalism, superficial criticism, 
unscriptural theology, and impractical ethics; and prepare 
once more to preach Christ and Him crucified for a lost 
world. We must proclaim Him with such conviction and 
soul appeal that every hearer will know that loyalty to the 
Deity of Christ és the foundation of our religion; that 
progress has not undermined the necessity of Calvary, nor 
the power of the cross; and that Christ risen from the 
tomb is conqueror of death, the redeemer of life, and 
Lord of all—Grorck BREWER. 


IT 
THE PATRIOTIC CHURCH 


GEORGE BREWER, D.D. 


Grosse Pointe Presbyterian Church 


A world-wide war has shaken our modern civilization 
to its very foundation. The whole world today is rock- 
ing under the pressure of political, social, economic, 
and religious upheavals that threaten all nations, and 
all people. Germany, shaken to the depths, must find 
a new foundation; Russia is still in chaos; England, 
France, Greece, and Italy have been stirred even to 
symptoms of anarchy, while the ground swell of 
Europe’s upheaval is alarmingly perceptible as it now 
breaks in erratic theories and false standards against 
our shores, threatening to engulf us in a new form of 
disaster. The war in Europe was between races, and 
the enemy was evident. The war in America is be- 
tween classes, and the enemy is often disguised. They 
look more like tramps than soldiers, and fight under 
the disguised names of ‘‘ Hyphenated Americans ”’; 
“Communists”; ‘‘ Anarchists’; “Socialists”; ‘I. 
W. W.” soap-box orators, who talk and will not work; 
“Radical Reformers,” drunk with wild theories; 
“ Frenzied Fanatics,’’ who must be heard at any cost; 
and Unnaturalized Foreigners, who like our money but 


37 


38 THE PATRIOTIC CHURCH 


not our flag. These are the self-appointed leaders who 
are now waging the new warfare for the so-called 
‘awakened workers of the world,” under the battle- 
cry: “The rights of the working man”; “ The greed 
of the upper classes ”’; “‘ The war between capital and 
labor.” Here is a vicious war with a real outcome; 
but what will that outcome be? 

Macaulay, the historian, with his far-sighted vision, 
tells us the outcome. He said, years ago—‘ As for 
America, I appeal to the twentieth century. Either 
some Cesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of govern- 
ment with a strong hand, or your republic will be as 
fearfully plundered and laid waste by barbarians in the 
twentieth century as the Roman Empire was in the 
fifth, with this difference—that the Huns and Vandals 
who ravaged Rome came from without her borders, 
while your Huns and Vandals will be engendered 
within your own country, and by your own institu- 
tions.” Was Macaulay right? That question must 
now be answered by all loyal Americans. The new 
war is on—the Huns and the Vandals are here, fight- 
ing to break down our laws and institutions, to disrupt 
our industry, and substitute the red flag for the Stars 
and Stripes. So, as citizens, we face an alarming prob- 
lem—as Christians, we face an eternal responsibility; 
and I, for one, believe that this is the crucial hour for 
the patriotic Christian Church to step right into the 
changing order and do what Christ wants done in all 
our national, industrial, and social relationships of life. 

But what can the Church do in the changing order 
of our day? Dr. Faunce says: “ The Church cannot 


GEORGE BREWER 39 


pose as an authority in sociology or economics. It 
cannot rush in where experts fear to tread. It cannot 
settle the problems of government taxation, industrial 
insurance, profit-sharing, and minimum wage—neither 
can it specify the exact number of hours for work, or 
the exact amount of wages to be paid—nor can it out- 
line a rigid program upon which the world must run. 
But it can speak with authority and power on the fun- 
damental Christian principles underlying all these 
things. It can proclaim, without fear or favor, the 
sacred rights of the individual as related to our indus- 
trial situation. The Christian Church must be utterly 
and eternally opposed to all forms of labor that de- 
grade, degenerate, or exploit the laborer.”’ Labor can- 
not always be agreeable—work is not always play; 
but it should never be a curse. Some men must repair 
our streets, dig our sewers, carry our garbage, mine our 
coal, breathe the hot air of the steel plants, and feed 
the blazing fires of our engines and furnaces. Some 
women must clean our floors, wash our clothes, and do 
the daily drudgery in a thousand ways. No mass- 
meeting orator can reverse the degree, ‘‘ In the sweat 
of thy brow shalt thou eat bread.” 

But the Church claims that in all labor there must 
be mutual consideration, honesty, and justice; that the 
work of the home should not crush out the soul of 
womanhood; nor the toil of the factory crush out the 
aspiration of manhood; that in a Christian land women 
and children should not be sacrificed to any alleged 
necessities of trade; that no unsanitary tenements are 
justified for the enrichment of landlords; that no occu- 


40 THE PATRIOTIC CHURCH 


pational disease should go without remedy; and that 
all toil without just compensation, or a just share in 
results, is unchristian, and therefore cannot be toler- 
ated in a Christian land. In other words, no church 
has a right to preach about golden streets in heaven, if 
it has no concern for the streets and alleys of the city; 
and no church has a right to picture the joys of the 
sweet bye-and-bye that is not making an honest effort 
to bring some of the joys of heaven into the industrial 
situation that we face here and now. 

And even more, the Church must proclaim the true 
democracy that should rule all men in all relationships 
of life. But what do we mean by democracy? We are 
all familiar with that patriotic phrase, “ All men are 
created free and equal.” Yet we all know that men 
are not created equal in a literal sense. They are not 
equal in mind, body, or in heart. Men are no more 
equal in character, ability, or service than they are 
alike in their looks, the color of their eyes, or the 
amount of hair upon their heads. Men are not born 
equal in the literal sense, and yet in spite of all differ- 
ences, we believe in a real equality that underlies our 
modern conception of true democracy. But what is 
that real equality? An authority answers, ‘ Society is 
not a sandpile, made up of individual atoms, but a liv- 
ing organism, in which all individuals are equally neces- 
sary to the full, complete, and harmonious working of 
this grand and living whole which we call society.” 

Let us look at this truth through an illustration: the 
tiny muscle that compresses the tear-duct in my eye is 
in no sense equal to the large muscle that moves my 


GEORGE BREWER 41 


arm. One is big; the other is small. One has the 
capacity to exert great strength; the other possesses 
only the minimum of strength. And yet, viewed in the 
body as a whole, both muscles are equal in that they 
are necessary to the full and harmonious working of 
the whole body, for if the tiny muscle in my eye fails 
to function it may rob me of my sight, and thus para- 
lyze the working of my arm and the usefulness of my 
body. In the same sense, we all believe in the funda- 
mental principle of human equality. All men are not 
equal in character, gifts, and powers; but they are all 
equal in the sense that every man is a necessary part 
of the whole, and as such he should have the equal 
opportunity for the highest individual development, not 
for himself alone, but for the full and harmonious 
working of the whole of which he is a part. 

In a true democracy every member must feel and 
measure up to the responsibility for the life of the 
whole body; and, if he does not, then he robs democ- 
racy of its real meaning, and causes trouble all along 
the line. A little finger may not seem to be the all- 
important member of the body, but if bruised and 
bleeding and left to fester in pain, it will soon send 
pain and poison throughout the whole system until it 
reaches the heart. In the true democracy no member 
of the living whole should be allowed to suffer; no 
group of members of the living whole should be allowed 
to rule, whether it is a class of radicals or revolution- 
ists, autocrats in labor, capital or in industry. Russia 
is an example of the neglected member; Germany is an 
example of class rule. But in the true democracy 


42 THE PATRIOTIC CHURCH 


there should be no class rule; there should be no suffer- 
ing members, for ‘“‘ we are all members of one body.” 
And this is the democracy which the Church must pro- 
claim for all relationships of life, because it is the only 
social order that can be built upon the fundamental 
teachings of Jesus Christ. 

And again the Christian Church must proclaim the 
far-reaching principle of industrial co-operation. In 
the World War we all saw the difference between the 
materialistic and Christian conception of life. The 
materialists said that war is a law of the eternal order. 
Christianity said that brotherhood is the law of the 
eternal order. The materialists said that competition 
is the fundamental law of life. Christianity said that 
co-operation is the fundamental law of life. Christian- 
ity has never approved of war or material competition 
as the fundamental basis of industrial life. We believe 
that all honest enterprise. is a partnership in which all 
men should work with a common purpose, mutual re- 
sponsibility, and with co-operating share in all results. 
This is the spirit of co-operation that was so magnifi- 
cently manifest in the allied forces of the world. All 
classes of all nations, fired by a common cause, were 
co-operating to win the war. 

If all classes could organize so effectively for the 
work of destruction in war, could they not now also 
co-operate in the work of construction in peace? Cer- 
tainly they can; and just as certainly the time has 
come when all business men of this country must think 
in the terms of the laboring man, and all laboring men 
must think in the terms of the business man, and all 


GEORGE BREWER 43 


try to see things from the other’s viewpoint. The time 
has come when co-operation and not conflict must be 
the watchword of all. This is the principle that is 
being advocated by some of our leading business men 
of today. Listen to these words of such a man, as pub- 
lished in a recent leaflet called ‘‘ Representation in 
Industry.” He says: 

“The soundest industrial policy is that which has 
constantly in mind the welfare of employees as well as 
the making of profits, and which, when human consid- 
erations demand it, subordinates profits to welfare. 
The day has passed when the conception of industry 
as chiefly a revenue-producing process can be main- 
tained. To cling to such conceptions is only to arouse 
antagonism and to court trouble. In the light of the 
present, every thoughtful man must concede that the 
purpose of industry is quite as much the advancement 
of social well-being as the accumulation of wealth.” 

In other words, when hard-headed business men, 
and experienced industrial leaders proclaim such co- 
operation, it tells us that the new day has already 
dawned. Competitive antagonism leads to anarchy. 
Loyal co-operation leads to industrial prosperity and 
peace; and this is the principle that the Church must 
proclaim with all her power. 

And, above all, the patriotic Church must proclaim 
the redeeming religion of Jesus Christ; the religion 
that was born at Bethlehem’s manger when the shining 
star guided the worshiping Wise Men to the birth-place 
of the world’s Redeemer; the religion that grew in 
power until it burst forth as the Sun of Righteousness, 


aay THE PATRIOTIC CHURCH 


the Light of the World; the religion that beamed upon 
the vine-clad hills of Jud#a, Samaria, and the utter- 
most parts of the earth until it aroused all sleeping 
Asia, as she lay dreaming of her heathen gods, to the 
life that is life indeed; the religion that shone with 
sufficient light and glory upon the cold materialistic 
formalism of northern Europe to start the conflagration 
that ended in the Reformation; the religion that lighted 
the path of the Pilgrims to this new world, our Chris- 
tian America; the religion that has conquered barbar- 
ism, violence, and superstition; that has transformed 
the savage into the saint, the brute into the brother; 
that has made the lame to walk, the blind to see, the 
heart to hope, and the world to rise into newness of 
life wherever it has been proclaimed; the religion that 
has regenerated, comforted, and sustained human 
hearts which have been responsive to its redeeming 
power; the religion that manifests itself in a burning 
passion for righteousness, a flaming fire for justice, and 
a regenerating power sufficient to save the world from 
its selfishness and sin; the religion that is still the 
fourfdation for all modern civilization and upon which 
empires, democracies, and republics may still safely 
build and achieve for the welfare of man and the glory 
of God. Yes, religion, the Christian religion, the 
Christ-inspired Christian religion is the only safe and 
abiding foundation for world-wide civilization. ‘There- 
fore, the patriotic Church must proclaim the redeeming 
religion of Jesus Christ. 

This is the conviction of world leaders. After the 
war Lloyd George said, ‘“ Now it is either Christ or 


GEORGE BREWER AS 


chaos; either the Kingdom of God or world revolu- 
tion.” Henry Watterson says, ‘“‘ The paramount ques- 
tion underlying democracy is the religion of Jesus 
Christ. Eliminate Christ and you leave the world to 
eternal war.” Earl Haig says, ‘The Church of 
Christ is the world’s only social hope, and the sole 
promise of world peace.” Lord Bryce says, ‘‘ Nothing 
but the power of Christianity can secure the world’s 
peace.”’ George W. Perkins, director of the Interna- 
tional Harvester Company, said, ‘‘ Christianity in the 
hearts of men is the need of the hour. I believe that 
the application of true Christianity is what the world 
is striving for; and I believe it will achieve it.’”’ One 
of our own labor leaders says, “ This world must come 
back to Christ—the greatest revolutionary that history 
has known, a revolutionary who carries out the revo- 
lution not by strikes, mobs, and lawless slaughter, but 
by dying Himself upon a cross.”’ 

Richard H. Edmons, editor, of Baltimore, says, 
‘“‘ Above all else this country needs a nation-wide re- 
vival of old-fashioned prayer-meeting religion.” Rob- 
ert Lansing says, ‘‘ The world can only meet this grave 
situation by renewing and strengthening its spiritual 
life, by turning away from materialism, and implanting 
in men’s souls those great fundamental principles 
which Christ taught, and which He manifested in 
His life on earth.” Roger Babson, the world-famed 
statistician, says, ‘‘The need of the hour is more 
religion everywhere, from the halls of Congress to the 
factories, mines, and forests. It is one thing to talk 
about plans and policies; but without a religious mo- 


46 THE PATRIOTIC CHURCH 


tive they are like a watch without a mainspring, or a 
body without the breath of life. And, remember, the 
Christian Church is the only organization in existence 
that supplies the motive equal to the situation.” 
Bernard Shaw says, ‘“ Why not give Christianity a 
trialep After contemplating the world of human nature 
for nearly sixty years, I see no other way out of the 
world’s misery, but the way of doing Christ’s will.” 

Then why not give Christianity a trial and put Christ 
to the test in our modern problems? 

This is exactly what the president of a large manu- 
facturing business in Cleveland is doing in his business. 
This Christian man was first an employee, then an em- 
ployment manager, and is now president of the concern. 
A short time ago their company sold a bill of goods to 
a customer in another town in Ohio. The buyer made 
an unwarranted claim for adjustment, which the com- 
pany refused to allow. Correspondence followed. The 
customer was insistent; the company was unyielding, 
and the situation was deadlocked. 

A few weeks later the president went to that city to 
call upon his customer. Entering the office, he said, 
“Tm Clark from Cleveland, and I dropped in to 
straighten out that account.”’ ‘‘ Oh, yes,” said the cus- 
tomer, “and what adjustment do you propose? ”’ 
‘‘ Just this,” said Clark, “I’m a Christian man, and I 
do not propose or intend to do anything that is not in 
accord with the principles of Christ. My proposition 
is for you to pay me just what you know to be due on 
a Christian basis.” ‘‘ That’s a blooming funny thing,” 
said the surprised customer. ‘I’ve never heard of 


GEORGE BREWER 47 


such an idea in business.” ‘‘ And business is so much 
the loser,” said Clark. “It’s the way I run my busi- 
ness, and I’m making no exception in your case.” 
“But you have me in a corner,” came back the cus- 
tomer. ‘‘ How did you know that I was a church mem- 
ber?” “TI didn’t,” said Clark. Then the business 
man pushed a button on his desk. A clerk appeared, 
and the business man said, ‘‘ Bring me a check for the 
full amount of that Cleveland bill,” and in a moment 
Clark had his money. This same man Clark addressed 
a group of manufacturers in the East. He told his 
theory of Christian co-operation in business. A great 
shoe manufacturer came back at him this way: “ I’ve 
done all the things you suggest. I’m a Christian man. 
But in spite of this, labor has gotten into my factory 
and have put over a strike. My whole plant is tied up. 
Your theory may sound all right, but it doesn’t work 
in practice. What can I doe ” 

‘Let me answer your question by asking one,” said 
Clark. ‘‘ How many of your employees are your per- 
sonal friends? How many of their homes have you 
visited this past year? ” ‘‘ None,” was the answer. 
“Yet these labor agitators that you complain about 
have been in these homes. They know the needs and 
the thoughts of your employees. They sympathize 
with them. They tell them that they will secure their 
demands. The result is the strike. Suppose you gave 
up just one night a month to calling on your employees 
where they live. Suppose each of your foremen and 
superintendents did the same. Do you think it would 
make any difference? Christ visited the homes of pub- 


48 THE PATRIOTIC CHURCH 


licans and poor folks, obtained their viewpoint, and the 
result is that His teaching is the marvel of history.” 
‘“T’m answered,” replied the manufacturer. This same 
man, Clark, was speaking before a great audience of 
working people with radical socialistic tendencies, and 
he said, ‘‘ The fruits of victory for which our boys 
fought in the World War will not be made secure, nor 
the world be safe for democracy, until every workman 
is honest with his employer, and every employer is 
honest with his men and altogether loyal to the prin- 
ciples of Jesus Christ.” 

These are wise words; they bring us back to Christ’s 
solution for our individual, social, national, and inter- 
national problems; they open up a line of patriotic 
service possible for all. I wonder how many of you 
realize that you will never have a greater opportunity 
for heroic service than in answering the challenge of 
the hour. Our country calls for men, Christ-converted, 
spirit-filled, conviction-moved, patriotic men, who will 
step out into the arena of our modern conflict and help 
to usher in the new era of individual integrity, social 
purity, industrial honesty, national democracy, and 
world-wide peace. 


“God give us men, men who when the tempest gathers, 
Grasp the standard of their fathers 
In the thickest of the fight. 
Let the cowards cringe and falter, 
Men who strike for home and altar 
Can defend the right. 
True to truth, though alone and lonely, 
Tender as the brave are, only 
Give us men! O, God, give us men! 


GEORGE BREWER 49 


“God give us men! A time like this demands 

Great hearts, strong minds, true faith, and willing hands. 
~ Men whom the lust of money does not kill; 

Men whom the spoils of office can not buy; 

Men who possess opinion and a will; 

Men who have honor, men who will not lie. 

Strong men, Christ crowned, who live above the fog, 

In public duties, and in serving God.” 


(gd Fle WT i 


Lord, bless Thy Church at work in the perplexities of 
the changing order, and face to face with the world-wide 
tasks. Fell Thy Church this day with the spirit and power 
of Christ. Make every minister a champion of righteous- 
ness and an ambassador of consolation. Draw all Chris- 
tians into a closer and more vital relationship with the 
Crucified, that they may serve Him in truer devotion. 
Increase our faith, enlarge our hope, strengthen our con- 
victtons, broaden our sympathies, and help us all to enter 
more sacrificially into Christ’s passion for the redemption 
of the world. We ask tt in His name. Amen. 


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CHESTER B. EMERSON 


Dr, Emerson was born in Haverhill, Massachtisetts, on 
July 28, 1882, from a family rich in its religious faith, its 
patriotic traditions, its Puritan conscience, and its lofty 
conception of social duty. He was graduated from Bow- 
doin College in 1904 and from Union Theological Semi- 
nary in 1909, receiving highest honors from both institu- 
tions. Upon his graduation from Union, he was ordained 
to the ministry in the Congregational Church at Bruns- 
wick, Maine, and was appointed to the First Parish 
Church of Saco, Maine, where he remained in happy 
fellowship and honored ministry for four years. In 1913 
he was called to the North Woodward Congregational 
Church in Detroit, and has enjoyed through these years a 
ministry of increasing helpfulness and popularity. A very 
deep spiritual ideal and purpose has taken hold of his 
marked gifts of thought and speech, and has wrought out 
a marvelously constructed message, which receives today 
as through the years the closest attention and highest 
praise of people from all walks of life. Dr. Emerson 
speaks with authority not only in his own city and among 
his own people but in many sections of the country, for 
he is being used constantly in the great cities as guest 
speaker at outstanding religious and community gather- 
ings. The strongest point in his preaching lies in its ver- 
satility, expressing himself as mystic, poet, scholar, and 
student of social life. Three of the colleges of America, 
Bowdoin, Hampton Institute, and Chicago Theological 
Seminary have placed him upon their boards of manage- 
ment ; and the Michigan Conference of the Congregational 
Church made him Moderator for 1925. 


MY PHILOSOPHY—1I believe that man és a child of 
God wha is a loving Father and who has created the world 
for man’s mental and spiritual maturing. 

I believe that the world rightly understood and used 
makes for happiness and is the best possible world. 

I believe that character is the meaning of lsfe and that 
this life is perfectly adapted to making it. 

I believe that man’s misery in himself, his misuse of the 
world and his misconception of life are due to the fact 
that he has missed the way. 

I believe that Jesus Christ is the way, the truth and the 
life of God for men, and that in Him and through Him 
men can find God. 

I beheve He wills to share and can share these gtfts 
with every human soul who will come asking. 

I belseve enough men will come to Him ultimately to 
make the Kingdom of God a reality in the earth, which 
1s the sway of Hts love in the counsel and conduct of men, 
singly and collectively, 

“To win Christ and be found in Him, not having mine 
own righteousness but the righteousness which is of God 
by faith,” is the difficult but certain ascent of life here and 
hereafter. 

To teach men these truths and help them live in their 
light 1s good reason and adequate reward for the Christian 
ministry,—CHESTER B, EMERSON. 


ITI 
REDEEMING THE TIME 


CHESTER B. EMERSON, D.D. 
North Woodward Congregational Church 


“See that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise; 
redeeming the time, because the days are evil.”’—Epu. 5: 15-16. 


What a world we are living in! So full of truth 
waiting a wise man’s question, so rich in treasures for 
a strong man’s capture, so vocal to sensitive ears, so 
beautiful to seeing eyes, so friendly to sympathetic 
souls. And yet so fearful to the ignorant, so stingy to 
the incompetent, so silent to the vociferous, so ugly to 
the unappreciative, so hard to the hateful. 

It is pretty much the same world as it has ever been. 
George Eliot was thinking that when she wrote in the 
beginning of Romola, “‘ The great river courses which 
have shaped the lives of men have hardly changed; and 
those other streams, the life currents that ebb and flow 
in human hearts, pulsate to the same great needs, the 
same great loves and terrors. We are impressed with 
the broad sameness of the human lot which never alters 
in the main headings of its history—hunger and labor. 
seed time and harvest, love and death.” 

We are confronted today by the same mysteries as 
our fathers. The Sphinx might as well sit at the head 


oo 


54 REDEEMING THE TIME 


of Wall Street as at the foot of the Pyramids. There 
she broods over the silences of the dead; here she 
would listen to the uproar of the living. The sands of 
the desert are no more desolate than the streets of the 
money market. There the thinking is too slow, here it 
is too quick. ‘There is little enlightenment in either 
place. Both desert and market miss the answer to the 
riddle. The old answer was man. The new answer is 
man also—the Spirit of man. 

The fable of the Sphinx is that she swallowed those 
who could not guess her riddles. Life always swallows 
those who are too busy with things to discover the 
spirit that informs things. Experience was meant to 
teach us wisdom. It is amazing how little of it we 
have. Life, like school, is frequented by dullards. In 
spite of the crowd of witnesses who surround us we go 
on making the same old blunders—lust, intemperance, 
avarice, suspicion, envy, malice, bigotry, hatred, war- 
fare. We continue to glorify our physical achieve- 
ments. The strong man is he who has beaten the world 
into a temporary submission, captured its citadels of 
treasure and defied all competitors. The great nation 
is the one that fears no one, sometimes not even God, 
and can and does take its own part, clutching for a 
century or two the chaff which the winds of history 
drive away. 

But the great facts and forces of life abide. Phys- 
ical discovery and mechanical enterprise do not alter 
them. They are eternal. Life today is complex, 
clothed in great luxury and fired by great ambition. 
Yet beneath all still are the same old ugly human pas- 


CHESTER B. EMERSON 55 


sions of anger, deceit, disobedience, jealousy, avarice, 
fear, hate. The one great peril still is moral death. 
The one great need is salvation. 

We go to the Book to learn those truths that most 
vitally concern God and humanity. ‘“ Here we find the 
most about what we are and what determines our des- 
tiny.” Man in the Bible is not a seeker of gain and 
pleasure, though the record is there of these by- 
interests which he followed to his moral undoing. He 
is a traveller out of the East toward the West, along 
the road from birth to death, possessed by “ longings - 
that take hold of eternity,” seeking a city that hath 
foundations. ‘‘ Man is here a sinner, but finding for- 
giveness; a mourner, but receiving comfort; a so- 
journer, but enabled to find a home eternal in the 
heavens.” That is God’s truth which transcends time 
and space, which ignores all the barriers of race and 
circumstance among men. 

Emerson says, “‘ See how the deep, divine thought 
reduces centuries and millenniums and makes itself 
present through all ages. Before the revelations of the 
soul, time, space, and nature shrink away—she has 
no dates, nor rights, nor persons, nor specialties, nor 
men. With each divine impulse her mind rends the 
thin rind of the visible and finite and comes out into 
eternity.” 

And that revelation which is of esters and today 
is that God, the Eternal, whose Godhead is redeeming 
love, is moving through time and circumstance to win 
man’s spirit to His spirit. Through all the fleeting 
years which are but shadow flecks upon His sunshine 


56 REDEEMING THE TIME 


His spirit works upon the hearts of men to save them 
from their worst to His best. To repent of our sins, 
our disobedience, our indifference, to hear and obey the 
voice of God speaking in the Book, in history and in 
our consciences is the beginning of life that has real 
meaning and permanence. 


“We are all blind until we see 
That in the human plan 
Nothing is worth the making if 
It does not make the man. 


“Why build these cities glorious 
If man unbuilded goes? 
In vain we build the world, unless 
The builder also grows.” 
(Epwin MarKHAM.) 


‘‘ See that ye walk circumspectly, not as foolish, but 
as wise; redeeming the time because the days are evil.” 

As we look out upon our world, the first thing we 
notice is a lack of restraint. Men and women seem to 
know no authority but their own captious wills. And 
the power behind these thrones of our selfhoods seems 
to be nothing more than undisciplined impulse. Led 
by psychology that is curiously like the adolescence 
which is its main study, they are searching for the 
obstacles which prevent the free exercise of desire not 
to recognize their validity, but to destroy their 
restraint. 

One might also say that one of our chief troubles 
today is lost complexes. ‘True enough, we do need to 
free men from morbid introspections and laming in- 
hibitions that they may proceed through life like the 


CHESTER B,. EMERSON 57 


free and joyous sons of God they were created to be. 
But there are complexes in our lives compounded of 
negatives that are of God. There are inhibitions dic- 
tated by the command of a self-conscious decency. 
Good proof of this may be found in the Ten Command- 
ments, whose prohibitions would be as improving today 
in a society which practised them as in that far-off 
yesterday. And if some prefer an enabling command- 
ment instead, they may well accept that great challenge 
of the New Testament—(I Cor. 6: 19) “ Know ye not 
that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which 
is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your 
own? For ye are bought with a price; therefore 
glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which 
are God’s.” 

Of course, it is evident that the real lack back of 
the unlicensed conduct of the times is the loss of our 
traditional recognition of the authority of God. We 
no longer hear God speak to us in thunderous tones of 
judgment. In our efforts to lighten the burdens of the 
Calvinistic Creed we have almost lifted the yoke of 
man’s responsibility to any higher God than himself. 
God has become a “ weakly diffused ”’ Being with gen- 
erous impulses. Omar Khayyam, being the philosopher 
of the multitude, as Dr. Luccock has suggested, pretty 
well defines their Deity when he says: 

“ Some there are who tell 
Of one who threatens he will toss to Hell 


The luckless Pots he marred in making—Pish! 
FHe’s a good fellow, and ’twill all be well.” 


Have we forgotten the awe of the prophets toward 


58 REDEEMING THE TIME 


Jehovah? Do we remember the austere love of Christ 
for Our Father? Did Jesus not say to His disciples 
when they went forth to preach His Gospel, “ Fear 
not them which kill the body but are not able to kill 
the soul; but rather fear him which is able to destroy 
both soul and body in hell.”” We read by the hard 
sayings of the Book too quickly. There is such a 
thing as the wrath of God—not wrath in the likeness 
of our swift anger and abdicated reasonableness, but 
an implacable opposition to all that is evil in us. 
There is such a thing as judgment. Thistle seeds 
flower in thistles, not roses. Evil deeds grow evil being, 
and evil being must be burned clean in the fires of 
retribution. 

All this is prefatory to saying we need to recover a 
consciousness of sin among men—that their lusts are 
more than vulgarities, their licenses are more than 
carelessness; that there is a moral standard to which 
men must conform, set by the Eternal God in the laws 
of nature and revealed in human terms in Jesus of 
Nazareth; that by His character are we judged, and 
only by His mercy are we redeemed. And as we come 
to understand this, we shall help each other back to a 
habit of prayer so lost these days because so many 
self-constituted leaders have assured us of its unreal- 
ity. We shall feel a need of help and will ask for it. 
We shall want a power not of ourselves to uphold us 
as we fight the forces of evil that come on with hue 
and cry unto us; we shall crave a peace that the con- 
fused world can neither give nor take away. 

We shall cease trying to be supermen, captors of 


CHESTER B. EMERSON 59 


heaven and earth, appreciating no values that are not 
personal and prudential, recognizing no authority but 
our own wills. When we have stopped cheering 
Nietzche, the pedagogue of our present-day motives 
lecturing us on the will to power, we may hear him in a 
bad moment lamenting the loss of his right to pray. 

“Never more wilt thou pray, never more worship, 
never more repose in boundless trust—thou renouncest 
the privilege of standing before an ultimate wisdom, an 
ultimate power, an ultimate mercy, and unharnessing 
thy thoughts—thou hast no constant watcher and 
friend for thy seven solitudes, thou livest without gaz- 
ing upon a mountain that hath snow on its head and 
fire at its heart; there is now no redeemer for thee, no 
one to promise a better life; there 1s no more reason 
in that which happens, no love in that which shall 
happen to thee; thy heart hath now no resting-place, 
witere it needeth only to find, not to seek; thou re- 
fussest any ultimate peace, thou desirest the eternal re- 
currence of war and peace—man of thy self-denial, wilt 
thou deny thyself all this? Whence wilt thou gain 
the strength? ” 

I think we shall grow quiet and become teachable, 
tractable, with a new wonder in our eyes, the wonder 
of understanding, and a new joy in our hearts, the joy 
of forgiveness, and, kneeling beside Jesus, our Saviour, 
pray the fond old prayer— 


“ Our Father, which art in Heaven, 
Flallowed be Thy name. 
Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, 
In: earth as it 1s in Heaven, 


60 REDEEMING THE TIME 


Give us this day our daily bread 

And forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those 
who trespass against us. 

And lead us not into temptation, 

But deliver us from evil.” 


The second thing we notice as we look out upon our 
world is its mad acquisitiveness. We are possessed 
with a mania for collecting things, from easy chairs to 
Rolls-Royces, if we are individuals, from crude oil to 
peoples, if we are nations. Our mental resources are 
pretty much exhausted by answering the question, 
‘What shall we eat; what shall we drink; and where- 
withal shall we be clothed?” Our business is merce- 
nary, our education predatory, our politics prudential, 
our religion competitive, and lately combative. 

And what have we for it all? Grudge labor which 
takes no joy in God’s creative gift; profit-making 
which keeps a man’s soul under lock and key with his 
treasures, suspicion which marks the average face as 
detective and not declarative, envy which sets every- 
body in a mad scramble of imitation, hatred which 
separates neighbor from neighbor, nation from nation. 
Yea, verily, — 


“The world is too much with us— 
Late and soon, getting and spending we lay waste 
our powers, — 
We have given away our hearts—a sordid boom.” 


But they need not be sordid! They may be joyous, 
full of the lilt of life, finding the world the best pos- 
sible of all worlds, a glorious place to live in and work 


CHESTER B. EMERSON 61 


in, and peopled by a wonderful crowd of folk, all eager 
to help and be helped, love and be loved, share and 
receive share. There is enough food and to spare, 
enough room, enough work, enough time for play and 
worship as well. And, above all, a great goal to seek, 
the Kingdom of God that is large enough to be inclusive 
of all the gifts that the nations can bring to it, and de- 
manding enough to be incomplete without goodwill and 
effort of every man. 

Here, again, back of the fact is the reason for it. 
_ The world has lost its sense of immortality. “ We go 
this way but once, let us enjoy it,” says the wisdom of 
the world. “Our years may be few, let us get ours 
while we can. Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow 
we die and we'll be a long time dead.”’ But how pa- 
thetically the Epicurean seeks surcease from his sor- 
row, as he picks the breaking string of his lute and 
looks on the face of his dead beloved. How pitifully 
he cries for power when the forces of life bruise and 
break the body. There comes a time when he cannot 
laugh or sing or dance. He faces the great event of 
death and his whole being shrinks from being blotted 
out. Then he wants to hear the dear old words, ‘‘ In 
my Father’s house are many homes. If it were not 
the truth, I would have told you. So let not your heart 
be troubled.” 

We must win back our assurance of immortality,— 
that whatever in us loves as Christ loved or is capable 
of being loved by such an One as He, cannot die. 
Nothing can kill it. It is beyond the reach of disease 
or decay. It is hid with Him in God. 


62 REDEEMING THE TIME 


“Immortal Love, within whose righteous will 1s 
always peace 
O pity us storm-tossed on waves of ill, 
Let passion cease. 
Come down in power within our hearts to reign 
For we are weak and struggle has been vain.” 


“The days are gone when far and wide our wills 
Drove us astray; 
And now we fain would climb the arduous hill 
That narrow way, 
Which leads through mist and rocks to Thine 
abode 
Toiling for man and Thee, Almighty God. 


“So may we, far away, when evening falls 
On life and love, 
Arrive at last the holy, happy halls 
With Thee above, 
Wounded, yet healed, sin-laden, yet forgiven 
And sure that goodness is our only Heaven.” 


If the world today is sadly in need of redemption, 
how shall it receive it? There is no redemption with- 
out a Redeemer. It was true for us who call Christ 
Lord and Master. It is true for those who have not 
yet found their freedom in Him. He came to us 
through the mediation of others. Shall we not also 
mediate His grace? Is not the redemption of our times 
our task? Sin is too often regarded as an illusion, an 
error of mortal mind. But it was real to Jesus. Other- 
wise there is no meaning to the incarnation or the 
atonement. The evil of the world is the result of 
ignorance or wilfulness. The incarnation is for one, 
the atonement for the other. One was to demonstrate 
righteousness; the other was to redeem unrighteous- 


CHESTER B. EMERSON 63 


ness, The work of redemption is our heritage from 
Christ. ‘“ See that ye walk circumspectly, not as fools, 
but as wise; redeeming the time because the days 
are evil.” 


“ Say not the days are evil, who’s to blame? 
And fold the arms and acquiesce. Cry shame! 
Stand up, speak out, and bravely, in God’s name.” 


Paul, who gives us our text, felt the responsibility 
of his world’s redemption. You will remember that in 
his epistle to the Colossians (1: 24) he confesses: “‘ I, 
Paul, am made a minister, who now rejoice in my suf- 
ferings for you and fill up that which is lacking in the 
afflictions of Christ.” Anything lacking in the afflic- 
tions of Christ? Is not Calvary enough? No! There 
must be incarnate calvaries everywhere. Without 
Paul, without Peter, Italy would not have set the cruci- 
fix at every crossroad. Without us, the world today 
will seek for salvation and seek in vain. If Jesus was 
God’s conduit of redeeming grace then are we His 
continuing channels. 

Paul rejoiced in his sufferings because he felt Christ 
was in him, still reconciling the world to God. And 
that is true of every genuine disciple of Christ. If 
Christ is in us, then are we seeking the goals of Christ. 
He ariswered the messenger of John the Baptist, ‘‘ The 
blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are 
cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up and 
the poor have the gospel preached to them.” Christ 
asks proof of our discipleship. Can we answer, “ The 
lost are found, the sick are healed, the poor are fed and 


64 REDEEMING THE TIME 


clothed and spiritually led, the rich are become stew- 
ards of the earth’s bounty, the exploiters are exposed, 
the vicious are restrained, the burdened are relieved, 
the sinful are recovered, the young and old and weak 
are protected, the acceptable year of the Lord is being 
preached to the ends of the earth”? It is to this task 
that we must consecrate ourselves with that same 
abandon which has marked the life of every disciple 
who has wrought righteousness in his generation. 

Have you read that wonderful page from the diary 
of Jonathan Edwards—“ I have this day solemnly re- 
newed my covenant and dedication. I have seen God 
and have given myself and all that I am and have to 
God, so that I am not In any respect my own. I can 
challenge no right to myself, to this understanding, this 
will, these affections. I have no right to this body, this 
tongue, these hands, these feet; no right to these 
senses. I have given every power to God, so that for 
the future I will challenge no right for myself.” That 
is a magnificent self-surrender. It is the complete 
dedication of a soul to God. For a day in which indi- 
vidual salvation was the supreme concern, it is the per- 
fect expression. But something more is needed for our 
day with its double emphasis—its other emphasis upon 
the social obligations of Christian discipleship. 

“Lord, what wouldst Thou have me do as well as 
be,” we ask today. 

The answer comes quickly, “‘ Seek and save the lost.” 

Who are the lost? 

Anyone who for any reason whatsoever is not grow- 
ing with and for the Christ. 


CHESTER B. EMERSON 65 


Where are the lost? 

Everywhere—in counting-room and shop, in office 
and in laboratory, in scholar’s study and at workman’s 
bench, in alley and in avenue—wherever life is in dis- 
sonance with the divine life; wherever a man’s char- 
acter is contrary to that of Christ, wherever humanity 
is seeking goals not found in the Kingdom of God or 
living by motives subversive to a reign of love in 
the earth. 

The world is waiting! We have the Word of Christ 
in Book and Church. Have we His love in our hearts? 
Are we equal to our enterprise? “See that ye walk 
circumspectly, not as fools, but as wise; redeeming the 
time because the days are evil.” 


PRAYER 


Here in our time and place, O God, our lives are set. 
Nor would we dream of days that seem heroic for the 
Christian faith, either in the past when great leaders 
preached a redeeming Lord across the world, nor in some 
mystical future when men may find conditions once again 
calling for Christian courage. 

Show us the high adventure that awaits us in our day. 
Reveal to us how great is the enterprise of Christ's King- 
dom in the tangled affairs of our world. Make heroes of 
us all, rising with courage to the challenge of evil, putting 
on Thine armor to withstand the forces that war against 
the virtue and happiness of our race. Bless us with the 
increase of a noble manhood, which is the Christian’s per- 
sonal reward, and with that visible enlargement of Thy 
Kingdom among men, which is the goal of Thy church. 
Amen, 


Wy. TURD bP 


Weng 


on 
My 


hee 


Bink 





JOHN WELLINGTON HOAG 


Dr. Hoag was born in Canada, but has spent most of 
his life in the United States. Lansing, Michigan, was his 
boyhood home ; and Kalamazoo College is his Alma Mater, 
being graduated there in 1900. His theological training 
was received at the Divinity School of Chicago University. 
Opening his ministry in the First Baptist Church of 
LaCrosse, Wisconsin, he has had a most happy relation- 
ship to some of the fine Baptist churches of our country, 
including the First Baptist Church of Trenton, New 
Jersey, and the Calvary Baptist Church of New Haven, 
Connecticut. Woodward Avenue Baptist Church, where 
Dr. Hoag is now located, is one of the great preaching 
centers of America. The church membership is approxi- 
mately thirty-five hundred, and the constituency of the 
church is exceedingly large. It is an evangelistic center, 
with one of the largest Sunday night congregations in the 
city; and the sane, challenging, and uplifting sermons of 
this genial prophet of God has made this possible. Ten 
years of such conspicuous service in the heart of Detroit 
is a record upon which we all look with admiration and 
respect. Many affirm that Dr. Hoag and his associate, 
Samuel Meyers, form the best evangelistic team now in 
the active pastorate. 


CALLING MEN TO CHRIST—Some one has said 
that “ the best way to edify a saint is to convert a sinner.” 
Surely a Church in which men are really taken and held 
for the Lord has an atmosphere in which souls must grow. 
Our place in a Church should mean a recognition of our 
responsibility for calling men into the ways of the Lord, 
to seize them and hold them as captwes of the divine 
grace. Men are called to be saved—and to be saviors. 
What can the Master say tf we fail of our very reason for 
being saved, and we come home at the end of our season 
of harvesting without any sheaves for the heavenly gar- 
ner? Jesus was constantly calling. He preached to the 
vast multitude; he talked with the individual; he went into 
the temple and synagogue; he went out to the streets, the 
markets, the lanes calling to men to come after him. “The 
Master 1s come and calleth for thee.’ If you are not a 
soul-winner, Christ can make you one. “Come ye after 
me and I will make you to become fishers of men.” We 
are “stewards of the mysteries of God.’ “Take my 
voice and let me speak ever only for my King.” 

—JOHN WELLINGTON Hoac. 


IV 
FUTURE MONARCHS 


JOHN WELLINGTON HOAG, D.D. 
Woodward Avenue Baptist Church 


“ Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” 
—Marrt. 5:5. 


We face here one of the hard sayings of Jesus. If 
He had promised dominion to the resourceful, He 
would have expressed more exactly our ideal. Or, if 
He had changed the latter part of the beatitude, and 
had promised the meek certain inner and mystical re- 
wards, we might have assented more readily. Or, if 
He had said, “ Blessed are the meek, for they shall 
have heaven ’—that gracious world where the unselfish 
and holy have their home—then indeed the promise 
would seem assured of fulfillment. But to offer to the 
meek the rewards of earth where bluster and brute 
strength count for so much and where civilization is 
carried forward on the end of a gun, is to make an 
assertion that risks the charge of absurdity. 

Still there must be a truth lurking in this beatitude, 
for Jesus spoke no empty words. Every prophecy He 
gave utterance to has revealed evident signs of coming 
true, and there is no probability that this brief bene- 
diction will prove any exception. Christ was not only 
practical, fitting Himself and His message to the im- 


69 


70 FUTURE MONARCHS 


mediate needs of His time, but He was also an idealist, 
speaking for the far-off centuries. Far more than the 
old artists who produced their masterpieces not so 
much for the small clan or tribe among which they 
lived, but more especially for the delight of the remote 
nations, so Jesus spoke for the future of the world, 
however long it might continue. The promises of God 
and the hopes of His children are not easily driven out 
of history: when they are banished they have a way of 
returning: when they are crucified they rise again. 
The text speaks of an heir, not a possessor: a kingdom 
assured in the future, though it may be after many 
days. It is by the long view that we see the apostles 
of the gentler kingdom coming into their own. 

The earth even now is making rapid strides toward a 
government swayed by this patient aristocracy. The 
human scene today is that of vast millions trying to 
marshal themselves under the lead of gentle methods. 
Nations everywhere disclaim champing the war bit. 
Arms are not now considered a symbol of the highest 
civilization. The ‘‘ pusher” was never more apolo- 
gized for than today. ‘“ Violence has its day, but it is 
not a long day.” We believe as never before that a 
peace congress is more civilized than a war camp and 
that fraternity is preferable to barbarism. The busi- 
ness man makes it to the advantage of his rival to go 
with him rather than against him: to maintain the 
market rather than break it. If the terrific animals 
have died to make room for birds of song: if the lark 
makes her nest in the blossoming grasses where ser- 
pents once hissed: if sweet apples fall where once bit- 


JOHN WELLINGTON HOAG 71 


ter fruit covered the September ground: then will the 
human race, yet, steal away from despots, monarchs, 
landed lords, to be governed by universal tenderness. 
The scene is that of a war-torn world coming home. 

The word translated by the English term. ‘‘ meek ” 
demands a moment’s attention. In the Greek tongue 
meekness implied “a peaceful and gentlemanly bear- 
ing, a tendency to avoid violence and a desire to seek 
the good and peace of all the community.” Meekness 
was considered a necessary characteristic of true cul- 
ture. Plato used the term to express the softening of 
a character or an age; Xenophon to describe music as 
it might die away to its quietest and sweetest tones; 
St. Francis to express the calmness of a heart which 
had conquered passion. In its best days, meekness 
stood for all that was gentle, not only in the mind, but 
also in nature. It stood for nations becoming more 
refined; stood for grapes sweetening in the autumn; 
stood for an orator whose bitter words were changing 
into sympathy and pathos. It was free from every 
element of rudeness. It pulsated with consideration 
and thoughtfulness. It sought to “melt rather than 
crush; to draw rather than drive; to woo rather than 
compel.” Jesus tells us that ultimately there will pass 
under the authority of such a spirit the many princi- 
palities and powers of our world. 

Consider the might of the meek. Meekness was 
never other than chivalrous and was never other than 
ready to champion the cause of the weak. Jesus was 
not all submission. He carried whip-cords and at times 
uttered blistering words, yet we claim that He was 


72 FUTURE MONARCHS 


truly meek. ‘There are occasions when meekness has 
a flash in the eye, a majesty of moral indignation, a 
terror of righteous anger. A very gentle preacher was 
seen, one day, hastening along the streets of his city 
“with a face. like fury, grinding his teeth in anger.” 
He had heard of a man who was plotting the ruin of 
a beautiful girl he knew. ‘‘ When since the world 
began has love ever maintained a quiet poise in the 
presence of the assailant.of the loved one?” It is not 
meekness to condone wrongdoing. ‘True meekness has 
a different reason for its calmness than a prudent re- 
gard for self-interest. It is a counterfeit of the grace 
of meekness to claim merit in commanding one’s tem- 
per when there is no temper to command. ‘The slave 
is not meek when he calls some tyrannical master a 
“blessed benefactor ” in order to keep his head on his 
shoulders. The politician is not meek when he lays 
aside his conscientious scruples, in order to stand in 
with the organization. ‘The merchant is not meek 
when he allows the man on the other side of the coun- 
ter to say anything to him, if only he can get his trade. 
All these things are done from shrewdness. If these 
people were truly meek they would cling to certain 
treasures of the soul, though driven thereby into battle. 

Jesus never fought for Himself. His anger never 
had its roots in selfishness. When men abused Him, 
He was unruffled. When they heaped the greatest in- 
dignities on His person, He was mute. When they lied 
about Him, He ‘“ answered not a word.” When they 
crucified Him, “‘ no trace of anger darkened His face.” 
His loving heart kept on praying, ‘“‘ Forgive them, for 


i 


JOHN WELLINGTON HOAG 73 


they know not what they do.” But when He saw pious 
men “ devouring widow’s houses ” and “ for a pretense 
making long prayers” the manly indignation of His 
soul flashed forth like lightning. When He saw the 
place of prayer turned into a “den of thieves,’ He 
drove the swarm of mercenary hypocrites into the 
street. Anger is noble just in proportion to its un- 
selfishness. Indignation is righteous when it is disin- 
terested. Only. the man who in loving obedience to 
truth has laid aside every prejudice and renounced his 
own personal desires, has any right to go forth as 
God’s warrior. - 


“ Meekness begins its universal rulership by a victory 


in the personal realm. ‘‘ Changed men will make 
changed conditions.” The soul is called first to the 
conquest of itself. To rule others we must know how 
to rule ourselves.” There is to be such a complete vic- 
tory over passion and pride and vindictiveness that we 
are left to the triumph of principles and the enthrone- 
ment of truth. One of the perpetual delusions of our 
human race is that possession of externals makes for 
kingship. We too often measure influence according 
to one’s ownership of the glittering things that lie out- 
side of him. There have never been so many interest- 
ing things to take hold of, to own, to acquire, to be 
ambitious after, to pile up, to enjoy, as now. But man 
succeeds only in proportion as he succeeds with him- 
self. ‘‘ Dost thou wish to possess the earth? ” asked 
St. Augustine once: ‘‘ Beware, lest the earth possess 
thee.” Our wealth is to be counted in the things of the 
heart and our success by the triumphs of the spirit. 


ue 


/ 


74 FUTURE MONARCHS 


You and I, as human beings, have nothing so impor- 


tant to attend to as the kingdom that lies within us. 
It is our business to work on that, to pile up wealth in 
the interior vault that no eye sees save God’s alone. It 
is our business, in season and out, to strive to conquer 
our spirit. ‘‘ A man that rules his own soul is greater 
than he who takes a city.”’ That is a task possible of 
accomplishing. We make poor work attempting to 
change conditions. The old world is adamantine, 
flint-like, hard as a rock. We change it very little, no 
matter how we strive and struggle. But we can change 
ourselves. We can change our ambitions, our scale of 
value, our goal, our way of looking at life, our aspira- 
tions, our conduct. The supreme social service is to 
socialize the social unit, the individual, and then the 
way is prepared for the coming of every good thing. 
Religion is resignation and trust before it is accom- 
plishment. How general the impression that power is | 
measured by exertion; that we are effective because of 
what we do; so that when we are not in exertion of 
some kind, we are not accomplishing anything. But 
entrance into the kingdom of grace is through the gate- 
way of our power to bear and not our power to achieve. 
‘““We estimate men according to the amount of pres- 
sure which they exert; Christ estimates Himself ac- 
cording to the amount of pressure which He can 
sustain.” Jesus stood and took what was given Him: 
bore what was laid upon Him. ‘“‘ He was oppressed 
and he was afflicted yet he opened not his mouth.” At 
the end of His days He said, “ The prince of this world 
hath nothing in me.” ‘No place in Me at which My 


JOHN WELLINGTON HOAG 15 


strength is not matched to his assaults.”” Who is there 
of us who does not feel that it is an achievement worthy 
of considerable praise to so much as even stand one’s 
ground under the tremendous attacks of evil. It is 
commonly not difficult for men to be active, or even 
bravely so. Action arouses activity. Enterprise thrills - 
our powers of enterprise. But where is the inspiration 
in standing still under a load that is almost heavier 
than one can sustain? To bear evil and wrong, to for- 
give, to suffer no resentment under injury, to be gentle 
when pride clamors for redress, to restrain envy, to 
bear defeat with a firm and peaceful mind, not to be 
vexed or fretted by cares, losses or petty injuries, to 
abide in serenity of spirit when trouble and disappoint- 
ment come—these are conquests worthy the best of us. 
“You begin to reign the moment you begin to suffer 
well.” 

Meekness is a modest word, humble, supplicating, 
and it puts us where we must consent to stand—in debt 
to God. It fastens the accent not on what the worship- 
per does for himself, but on what God has done for 
him, and is prepared to do. Have not our best hours— 
the hours when we make some notable recovery of our- 
selves, or make some new advance into the life of faith 
—been hours not of striving or of wrestling, but hours 
when something came to us; happened within us, not 
by our own will, but by the will of another? A fine 
spirit was let loose within us; descended from above. 
It was never intended that our faith should be based 
on anything we can do. That would be to keep us 
anxious, worried, doubtful. Faith should relieve life 


76 FUTURE MONARCHS 


of strain, not add thereto. Men must stop thinking 
about themselves and begin thinking out of themselves 
towards the infinite peace of God. There is a need of 
the human soul for an element of rest and peace, for 
an end of all worries and harassments, for a sense that 
somehow the battle is not yet all to fight, but has been 
fought and won and that it is ours, partly at least, to 
sit down under our fig-tree, none making us afraid. 
Every grace and hope of the soul depends not upon 
our poor hold of God, but upon His hold of us; not 
upon what we are, but upon what He is. We earn 
nothing from God; we receive all things. It is the 
genius of meekness to bring us into just this attitude 
to God. 

¥ The way in which the warm air commences in April 
and May in all gentleness, to intrude and insinuate 
itself, moving with so velvety a tread, and with a voice 
so muffled to a whisper that we see what it is doing 
without at all realizing that it is doing it, seems a kind 
of parable, teaching the lesson of the text. The cold 
and frozen obstinacy of winter is not forced out. The 
ice that a little while before had fettered the rivers and 
rendered the soil barren and unfeeling is not pounded 
into the beauteous plasticity of swollen rivers and 
freshly flowing brooks. A bit of sunbeam pleads with 
the frost crystal and simply by the warmth of its touch 
subdues it into a tear. ! 

In this we may read the method of future monarchs. 
‘Spiritual results are wrought by enticement. Man’s 
will is not amenable to compulsion. You can compel 
one to do what he does not want to do, but you cannot 


JOHN WELLINGTON HOAG he 4 


compel one to will what he is not disposed to will. 
Between Christ and those who came near enough to 
Him to be brought within the tenderness of His 
thought and life there was no friction. There could be 
none. Henever attempted to crowd people to the doing 
of what they were not in a mood to do. He took care 
not to come where He was not wanted: did not enter 
without being invited. He never evinces a desire to 
have people conform their behavior to the requirements 
He imposed because they were His requirements. It 
was His supreme aim to work in men the subduing of 
their wills by the coming of a spiritual summer. 

God has not so much brightened the world to its 
redemption as warmed it to its redemption so that 
wherever the gospel has gone, a wave of spiritual 
verdure has followed in its train, hearts have been 
touched and in the mellowed atmosphere of it all, the 
native obstinacy of men has begun a little to soften 
toward God’s holy and loving will. ‘ Our inclination is 
to seek to improve the world by chastising it, to check 
manifestations of depravity by sharp invectives, but it 
is to be doubted if society at large, or individuals have 
been led to ennobled ways of living by this method. { 
Flowers are blasted by tornadoes, not nurtured by 
them. Salvation, whether of men or of society, is a 
matter of the incoming of a more genial climate, in 
which there shall be the softening of our nature; a 
matter of the diffusion of a redeeming atmosphere. It 
is by the wealth of our affection that we are to make 
our richest contribution to the world and to be the 
means of extending to the hearts of men the abounding 


78 FUTURE MONARCHS 


sweetness that gained entrance into the world in the 
person of our loving Redeemer. 

The hope of the ultimate victory of meekness is to 
be seen in its vast store of patience. The modern 
scientific way of writing human history has a theolog- 
ical and ethical advantage—it brings us a lesson in the 
patience of God and in the durability of the human 
ideals with which He has entrusted His children. To 
fix one’s imagination upon the stretches of time which 
elapsed between the arrival of humanity and the ap- 
pearance of anything which could be called civilization 
—it seems to tell us never to be impatient again, not 
though the best things seem to remove themselves like 
the horizon toward which we advance. All the delays 
over which we fret seem tiny compared with the 
stretches of time which it has taken to build even the 
rough outline of a civilized world. They had long to 
wait in the Old Testament days before their King came 
‘to them. They had long to wait after Christianity had 
started upon its great adventure, before they saw re- 
sults commensurate with the struggle and the cost. 
“He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till he has set 
judgment in the earth; and the isles shall wait for his 
law.” The meek have the gift of patience: they know 
how to sow their seed and bide their time. Some day 
they shall put in their sickles and reap, because their 
harvest is come. 

Our text gives to Charles Rann Kennedy the theme 
for his one-act drama, “The Terrible Meek.” The 
dramatis persone are three—a Captain, a Sergeant and 
a Woman. As the plot unravels, the Woman is seen 


JOHN WELLINGTON HOAG 79 


to wear the Eastern costume; the Sergeant is a Roman 
Soldier; the Captain is a Roman Centurion; on the top 
of the little hill three crosses are seen to stand. The 
woman bewails the victim, for he is her son and he has 
done nothing but speak words of truth and love. Sud- 
denly conviction creeps through the Captain’s soul, 
and when the woman moans “ My son! My son is 
dead,” he answers her, 


“This broken thing up here, your son, I tell you, 
woman, this son of yours, disfigured, shamed, spat 
upon, has built a kingdom this day that can never die. 
The living glory of him rules it. It will take a new 
kind of soldier to serve in his kingdom. A new kind 
of duty. A newer courage, more like a woman’s. It 
changes everything. . . . The earth is his and he made 
it. He and his brothers have been moulding and 
making it through the long ages; they are the only ones 
who ever really did possess it, not the proud, not the 
idle, not the wealthy, not the vaunting empires of the 
world. Something has happened up here on this hill 
today to shake all our kingdoms of blood and fear to 
the dust. . . °. The meek, the terrible meek, the 
fierce agonizing meek, are about to enter into their 
inheritance. . . 

‘“‘T can see the end of war in this: some day... . 

“‘T can see the joy of women and little children. 

“TI can see cities and great spaces of land full of 
happiness. 

‘“‘T can see love shining in every face. 

“There shall be no more sin, no pain... . 

‘No loss, no death... . 

“Only life, only God... . 

‘And the kingdom of the Son.” 


80 FUTURE MONARCHS 


Meekness is indeed terrible. Slowly, steadily, irre- 
sistibly it runs its tidal course, overwhelming one after 
another the little sand-barriers we draw across it. 
There is but one thing for us to do;—follow the gleam 
till love is triumphant and the kingdoms of selfishness 
and spite are broken like a potter’s vessel. 


PRAYER 


O Lord, Thou who knowest the end from the beginning, 
make us patient in the working out of thy counsels. Grant 
that we may never lose fasth in the ultimate victory of thy 
power over everything that worketh destruction. When 
we look back upon our days we learn how the night was so 
often better than the day. We see that our tears were 
foolish and our doubts were phantoms. We remember 
how many tumes when the yoke was upon us and we 
dreaded it, it became an easy yoke, and a yoke in which 
lay our strength. We remember how often we sought to 
overleap barriers and to choose paths for ourselves, and 
murmured at the restraint which hedged us in; and yet 
looking back, we see that the wisdom of thine overruling 
providence, and thy plans for us, have been full of light. 
Since thou hast so wisely guided us hitherto, we pray that 
thou still should’st lead us on. We do not ask to see the 
distant scene, one step enough for us. We pray that we 
may not feel with any storm which comes that it is the last 
of sunshine. May we imitate the birds that nestle in the 
trees until the voice of God in thunder has passed and the 
sun comes back, and then sing again. Help us to learn 
from the flowers that though they are beaten down by the 
storm, stul, when the rain ceases, they are lifted up, again 
fresher and more glorious than ever. We pray that with 
this faith we may face all that awaits us, walking in thy 
stght, surrounded by thy presence and power, and realiz- 
ing “if thou be for us, who can be against us?” Amen. 


LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 


There are few men in the Church today who possess 
the historical and theological background of Dr. Hough. 
The stream of his thinking is crowded with significant 
events and strategic lives, making his discourses scholarly 
and inspiring. There is an irresistible lure in every mes- 
sage. His sermons remind one of the compositions of 
Liszt, combining the invaluable element of completeness 
with brilliancy, dignity and dramatic force. As an author 
of religious books he ranks with the best; and as college 
preacher there is no superior in America. This past year 
he acted as chapel preacher at Harvard; and he gave the 
Fernley Lectures in England this summer, one of the 
highest honors to be accorded an American preacher. For 
some years he has been considered America’s representa- 
tive preacher in England, preaching to appreciative audi- 
ences in London City Temple and in Carr’s Lane, Bir- 
mingham. It was five years ago that Dr. Hough came to 
Central Methodist Church in Detroit after several years 
of notable service first as teacher in and later as President 
of Northwestern University. Central Church is the 
mother Church of Michigan Methodism; and, while it has 
a great tradition, it can be said truthfully that never has 
its life been so virile and influential as now. This fact is 
due in large part to the wise ministry of Dr. Hough and 
his assistants whom he has so carefully selected through 
the years. In this man of extraordinary preaching ability, 
we have also an example of unusual fidelity to pastoral 
activities and responsibilities, all of which go to make up 
a remarkably fine ministry. 


THE MIND OF THE PREACHER—The making of 
the preacher’s mind is the fashioning of the instrument by 
which he 1s to do hts work among men. It must be a 
mind all dripping with human heartiness and so it must be 
fed by constant and sympathetic human contacts. It must 
be a mind wise with the knowledge of the fashion in which 
men and races have made the experiment of living and 
so it must be enriched by a constant and brooding study 
of the whole human adventure. It must be a mind satu- 
rated with moral passion and so tt must know the strain 
and stress of personal struggle and all the tale of moral 
battle and of moral victory in the world. It must be a 
mind glowing with the sense of beauty and so it must find 
its way into all the tale of the fashion in which sheer lov- 
liness has made a place for itself in the life of man. It 
must be a mind radiant with the sense of the presence and 
potency of God in human life and so 1t must know its own 
hours of stlent and creative communion with the Unseen 
Friend. It must find tts supreme imspiration in the po- 
tency of the personality of Jesus and so it must know the 
meaning of fellowship with the living Christ. All thts ts 
sure to seem too high for any of us. But for less than 
this we do not dare to aspire-—LYNN Haroip Houecu. 


V 
THE HHEL OF ACHILLES 


LYNN HAROLD HOUGH, Tu.D., D.D. 
Central Methodist Episcopal Church 


“Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall.” 
—I Cor, 10: 12. 


Among those famous stories which the lovely land 
of Greece has given to the world, the tale of Achilles 
has a place all its own in the imagination of every 
bright-eyed lad who has lived over those fierce and 
tremendous struggles which still come back to us 
through the noblest speech ever fashioned by the mind 
of man. And the story of how Thetis, the mother of. 
Achilles, dipped the baby form into the river Styx in 
order that it might be invulnerable has a curious power 
to capture the mind. What a dream this was of a 
warrior who could never be reached by any hostile 
weapon. But the spot where Thetis held the young 
Achilles by the heel as she submerged his body into the 
river was untoched by its powerful waters, and it was 
in the heel that at last Achilles was fatally wounded by 
Paris when his mighty days were at an end. The heel 
of Achilles has become the symbol of that one vulner- 
able point where a great life may be broken. And it 
comes to our minds very vividly as we repeat the stern 


83 


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v a 


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a 
, 
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84 THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 


and challenging words of Paul, ‘‘ Let him that thinketh 
he standeth take heed lest he fall.’’ 


I 


fi" & bye i ° rir) e © « 
_ Every individual has some spot in his life where he 
* is least capable of making resistance, least able to meet 


the shock of hostility, least able to withstand the allure- 
ments of temptation, most likely to go down in utter 
and bitter defeat. Every life has its most vulnerable 
point. Every man has the heel of Achilles. It is just 
in relation to this point of weakness that the suffering 
of the world reaches one of its bitterly poignant aspects 
of experience. The life seems so strong and fearless 
and victorious. But somewhere is that spot where all 
the lordly strength is likely to become incapable weak- 
ness. And too often the mere possibility is changed to 
tragic actuality. The weapon of the foe has found the 
heel of Achilles, and while the life goes on there is an 
unspeakably bitter sense of failure within. Memory 
burns with the iIneffaceable bitterness of the hours 
which would so gladly be cast into the darkness of a 
perpetual forgetfulness. Life would have a great and 
triumphant joy but for that vulnerable spot, that dis- 


* . «integrating failure which puts its poison into the 


, P 
« # 


‘U"" yw’ brightest hour. 


we 


The most terrible aspect of the experience of the 
Greek warrior was precisely in the fact that fate itself 
followed him. There was nothing he could do. There 
was no escape. And sometimes we have this same 
feeling of a remorseless destiny which makes us in- 
capable of resisting just where resistance would lift life 


LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 85 


from defeat into victory. We feel as if it is useless to 
strive and impossible to conquer. But the very genius 
of Christianity is a contradiction of this fatal pessi- 
mism. There is no evasion or hesitation about the 
Christian religion. It meets squarely the ugliest and 
most brutal facts. But it comes not with a message of 
despair, but with a message of hope. It reminds us 
that it is all too easy to break faith with our ideals, and 
even with our principles. It shows us without hesita- 
tion that the hour of thoughtless confidence is the 
very hour when defeat lies in waiting. It reminds us 
that when pride and boastful assurance capture our 
thoughts, tragic failure is nearer than we think. It 
never ignores the heel of Achilles. But, on the other 
hand, it never admits that failure is necessary. And if 
failure has come, it never leaves us in despair. There 
is a way from weakness into strength. There is a way 
from defeat into victory. There is a fashion in which 
the most vulnerable spot may be made impervious to 
the darts of the foe. It is in just this sense that Chris- 
tianity is a gospel. In a unique fashion it unites moral 
realism with infinite hope. It enables a man to be per- 
fectly honest and yet to find a gleaming star shining in 
the darkest night. 


Il 


Great institutions are being built up around us all 
the while. They are the pride of our complex and 
highly organized civilization. And in a sense each in- 
stitution is a vast super-person with a life and will of 
its own, a tremendous and vital organism. It is true 


86 THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 


of an institution as of an individual that it needs to 
guard itself against the tragedy of the heel of Achilles. 
A great university may be tempted to think more of 
the brilliant and skilful publicity which calls forth 
large donations than of the patient experiment in the 
laboratory and the patient research in the study and 
library which really add to the knowledge and power 
of the world. It may be tempted to think more of pro- 
ducing keen and efficient men of business than of cher- 
ishing its sacred traditions of knowledge and taste. It 
may surrender the humanities to practical efficiency 
instead of suffusing practical efficiency with all the 
grace and strength of the humanities. 

And so it may cease really to be a university at all. 
Its practical ambition may be the heel of Achilles 
which proves fatally vulnerable. A great corporation 
may think of its material product and ignore that 
human product which is the constant result of its 
methods and its standards. And in the long run such 
an institution always fails, not only in ideals, but also 
in relation to its material products. With all its far- 
flung power and energy the heel of Achilles has proved 
its undoing at last. The greatest friend of any institu- 
tion is the man who, before the day of disaster comes, 
reveals to that institution its most vulnerable spot. 


IIl 


The Christian Church has a place all its own among 
the commanding institutions of the world. In age, in 
dignity, and in the august quality of the sanctions 
which it represents, as well as in its age-long influence 


LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 87 


for cleansing the ideals and uplifting the standards of 
men, the Church is the loftiest institution which has 
made its influence felt in the life of mankind. It is 
also a sort of super-person whose vast proportions 
dominate many a century. And the Church, too, must 
beware of the heel of Achilles. There is an ever- 
recurring temptation of loyal churchmen, a temptation 
which returns with a deep and alluring appeal in all 
sorts of conditions and in all sorts of places. And this 
temptation takes the form of leading men to think 
more of the dominance of the church than of its vital 
authority of the kingdom of God. To be sure, at some 
golden moments the contention of the Church is one 
with the contention with the kingdom of God. And 
enthusiastic churchmen always try to persuade them- 
selves that in fighting the battles of the Church they 
are fighting the battles of the kingdom. But the mo- 
ment we begin to study the history of the Church in 
the world we see that this is by no means always the 
case. Indeed, all too often just the opposite situation 
has existed. And so, again and again, the churchman 
has ceased to be a Christian at the very moment when 
he was spending everything in loyalty to the Church. 
The ages when the Church was willing to surrender the 
very sanctions for which Jesus stood in the battle for 
world-wide power tell the whole story. 

But it is not simply an old story. When the Church 
divides into varied groups and each group regards its 
own group advantage as of more importance than the 
spread of the spirit of Jesus in the world, then the 
Christian religion is indeed wounded in the house of its 


88 THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 


friends. There is no more subtle test of the real qual- 
ity of our Christian character than that which comes 
when the interests of the kingdom of God run athwart 
our denominational advantage. It is very easy for the 
self-conscious ecclesiastic to forget the love which is 
the central thing in the Christian faith. So the fatal 
dart reaches the heel of Achilles. There is no more 
splendid achievement than that of actually enthroning 
Jesus Christ in the Christian Church. 


IV 


The nation is one of the vast and mighty organisms 
of the world. It, too, has in a sense a life and a mind 
and a will of its own. It, too, is a sort of super-person. 
And it, too, must be guarded against the tragedy of the 
heel of Achilles. It is a wonderful thing to have a 
nation to love and serve and into which to pour the 
very riches of our devotion. 

And if we really love our nation with deep and un- 
derstanding devotion, we will develop, out of the very 
earnestness of our affection, a capacity to discern the 
dangers which menace and the weaknesses which 
threaten the land which we love best of all. It is an 
uncritical loyalty from which a great nation is likely 
to suffer most. This is the heel of Achilles, the one 
most vulnerable spot where many a land has been 
fatally wounded. When the citizens of any land be- 
come the victims of a kind of fatty complacency which 
is incapable of stern and honest self-criticism, the na- 
tion has already entered upon the way which leads to 
folly and failure and disintegration. There is an in- 


LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 89 


sight of love which, just because it cares so deeply, dis- 
covers faults which would be invisible to less devoted 
eyes. It is not really true that noble love is blind. In 
a sense it is true that only love can see. The nation 
which is too proud to be complacent, too honest to hide 
its faults under a protective covering of self-deception, 
too keen of mind to rest in a fool’s paradise of self- 
assurance has achieved a unique quality of greatness. 
When a nation is incapable of searching self-criticism 
its friends have cause to mourn. The heel of Achilles 
is ready for the darts of the foe. 


V 


The whole civilized world is a vast and mighty organ- 
ism. Civilization itself has a life and a mind and a 
will. It, too, is a sort of tremendous super-person. 
And civilization must beware of the heel of Achilles. 
The world which we know has one outstanding char- 
acteristic. And that is such a mastery of the forces of 
nature as was never achieved by mankind in any other 
age. We have enslaved nature and have become lords 
of such power as causes our very heads to swim and 
become dizzy. Unparalleled production, unparalleled 
transportation, and bewildering creative uses of the 
forces of nature characterize the civilization we call 
our own. 

And the heel of this mighty Achilles lies just in the 
lack of a development of self-control which matches 
this vast control of nature. We have grown in knowl- 
edge without a corresponding growth in character. We 
have grown in the capacity to dominate destructive 


90 THE HEEL OF ACHILLES 


forces without growing in that quality of character 
which makes us worthy to be trusted with such terrible 
instruments of destruction. We are like undisciplined 
children playing with matches in a powder magazine. 
The heel of Achilles is all too palpably vulnerable to 
the darts which may come against it. If this mighty 
civilization can attain character as well as power, all 
will be well with the world for a thousand years. And 
then new vistas of progress will be opening before it. 
To be as strong everywhere as he is anywhere is the 
achievement which every individual should hold before 
his eyes. The curious tendency of men to think com- 
placently of their strength and to refuse to analyze 
candidly their weaknesses is the source of an enormous 
proportion of human failures. And institutions and 
nations have the same curious characteristics. We 
“rationalize” (to use the Freudian term) our weak- 
nesses and exhibit the heel of Achilles as an element 
of peculiar power. So far do we carry this process of 
deluding ourselves that men and institutions at times 
appear to be proud of their weaknesses and ashamed 
of their strength. But this world of illusion receives a 
rude shock when the fatal arrow finds Achilles’ heel. 
Of men and institutions, of churches, of nations, and 
of the whole civilized world, then, it is clearly true that 
the story of the one vulnerable spot has a tremendous 
significance. Each one of them needs to hear and to 
heed the searching words of Paul, “ Let him that think- 
eth he standeth take heed lest he fall.” But there is no 
fatal necessity about it all. A man may be saved from 
fatal weakness. An institution may be strong at the 


LYNN HAROLD HOUGH 91 


very point where it is most easy for it to be weak. The 
Church may really enthrone Christ. The nation may 
become capable of noble and effective self-criticism. 
The civilized world may attain character as well as 
power. That is the very meaning of the gospel of 
Christ. These are the mighty stakes of these astound- 
ing days. Danger does not mean inevitable catas- 
trophe. In spite of the heel of Achilles, it is possible 
to be invulnerable. 


Pee ilk 


Our Father, with wistful desire we long for complete- 
ness. We are grateful that we find that completeness im 
Thee. We desire for knowledge where we are ignorant, 
for strength where we are weak, for goodness where we 
are evil. And we are like men who sense the coming of 
spring after winter as we realize that we can find all these 
things in Thee. We thank Thee for a salvation which 
with sure mstinct finds the vulnerable point in men, sn 
institutions, in nations, in churches and in ciwilization 4t- 
self, and which comes with healing and strength just 
where these things are needed most. May our weakest 
spot become our place of strength. In the name of Christ. 
Amen. 


, Or 4, 
avai 
AVR ity: 
EPL) 


ih) 4 ie 





EDGAR DeWITT JONES 


The mark’ of Southern chivalry and the far vision of 
the Texan plains is stamped upon the life of Dr. Jones. 
He was born in Hearne, Texas, in 1876. The law pro- 
fession lured him on in his younger days, and with this 
goal in mind he studied in the University of Missouri and 
at Transylvania University, where he was graduated in 
1900. One year later he abandoned the study of law for 
the ministry, and was immediately ordained minister in 
the Disciples of Christ Church. For fourteen years he 
was minister at the First Christian Church of Blooming- 
ton, Illinois, coming to the Central Christian Church of 
Detroit in 1920. While at Bloomington, in the midst of 
an unusual pastorate, Illinois Wesleyan University con- 
ferred the degree of D.D. upon him. Scholarly, devo- 
tional, brotherly, versatile and original in thought and 
speech, he has made a deep impression on Detroit, and is 
in the midst of a happy and fruitful ministry. His pub- 
lished sermons have attracted wide attention, the best 
volume being published under the title, “ When Jesus 
Wrote on the Ground.” The Detroit News has taken him 
on its staff, where he has found a larger mission through 
articles of social and political conditions at home and 
abroad. The city owes him a great debt for these and 
similar contributions to her social and civic life. In this 
day of emphasis upon the mechanical, even in religion, 
there is a great need for such preaching as this sermon 
‘presents. After all, the outstanding need of human life 
is to follow Christ. 


THE WITCHERY OF PREACHING—There 1s a 
word which I like to apply to preaching—the word * ‘witch- 
ery.” It means “irresistible influence” and “ enchant- 
ment.” Preaching is a high adventure, not for the dis- 
covery of new contments or fabulous mines of earthly 
treasure, but for human beings created in God’s image and 
intended to enjoy the abundant life. No man is worthy 
the high calling of the mintstry unless he have a passion 
for that calling and is conscious of the witchery of 
preaching. As long as the minister of Jesus Christ so 
regards his ministry and the preaching of the word his 
“opening of the Scriptures” is almost certain to be wm- 
presswe, wmformative, tmspiring, and what is most 
desirable, converting. ; 

I offer my testumony here, modest though st may be. 
My ministry is my life. From the day I decided to aban- 
don my dream as a member of the legal profession until 
this present hour, the ministry has been the biggest, most 
alluring, most challenging of life’s objectives. Every 
Lord’s Day has been to me a high day; every sermon a 
spiritual adventure; every man, woman, and little child 
etther actually or potentially a comrade in Jesus Christ. I 
have never attained unto my ideal as a minister. It eludes 
me; but I still pursue —Epcar DEWITT Jones. 


VI 
IMITATION OF CHRIST 


EDGAR DEWITT JONES, D.D. 
Central Christian Church (Disciples) 


“ Father forgive them, for they know not what they do.” 
—LuKkE 23: 34. 


“And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay 
not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this he fell 
asleep.”—Acts 7: 59-60. 


“ At my first defense no one took my part, but all forsook me. 
May it not be laid to their account.”’—II Tim. 4: 16 


One of the smallest of the world’s famous books is 
The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas a Kempis. It 


can be read in less than two hours, and slowly at that. 
In the opinion of some critics, this little work is ranked ._ 
second to the Bible. It was written by a monk about © ¢ 


the middle of the fifteenth century, and is renowned 
for its devotional and spiritual power. For nearly five 


hundred years this little book has held its unique place. “4” 


It is a series of eloquent meditations in making one’s 
life like that of Christ on earth. Hence the title, The 
Imitation of Christ. 

In this connection it is interesting to note that Peter, 
in his first epistle, the second chapter, writes, ‘‘ Christ 
also suffered for you, leaving you an example that ye 
should follow in his steps.” Likewise Paul, in Ephe- 
sians, exhorts his hearers to be ‘‘ imitators of Christ.” 
With these injunctions in mind, together with the cele- 


95 


ie 


96 IMITATION OF CHRIST 


brated little volume by 4 Kempis, it may be profitable 
to group together for study three New Testament inci- 
dents, which indicate how impressively the early 
Christians were affected by the example of Jesus. The 
three passages selected are grouped about the Christ, 
the martyr Stephen, and the apostle Paul. They are 
like three links in a golden chain. Moreover, they 
present three scenes full of pathos and_ sacrifice 
sublime. 


I 


Scene the first is Calvary and the Crucifixion. 
Artists have endeavored to paint this scene; but they 
have only partially succeeded. It beggars description. 
The long vigil is over. The agony in Gethsemane, the 
betrayal by the traitor’s kiss, the cruel trials, the beat- 
ing and the buffeting of the prisoner at the hands of 
the soldiers, the mocking and the spitting in the face— 
all are past, and the beginning of the end is at hand. 
Jesus is nailed to the cross and lifted high “ amid that 
wild and savage crew.” With Him, one on either side, 
two robbers are crucified.. It is the hour of the enemies’ 
triumph; the power of darkness reigns. The crowd 
surges about the foot of the central cross, and they jeer 
and taunt the Nazarene. With hoarse voices they cry, 
‘““Come down from the cross, if thou art the Son of 
God.”” Others cry with cruel sarcasm, “‘ He saved 
others, himself he cannot save. Let him come down 
from the cross and we will believe on him.” ‘Thus the 
enemies of Christ had their inning, and in hate they 
taunted Him, hanging helpless on the wooden cross- 


EDGAR DeWITT JONES 97 


beam. And oh, marvelous record—He answered; but 
not in bitterness or in wrath. Seven times He spoke 
from the cross; and His first saying is the greatest of 
all. He said, ‘‘ Father, forgive them; for they know 
not what they do.” 

From whatsoever angle one surveys this saying, it 
is altogether wonderful. It is so far above our poor 
human prejudices that there is a wideness in the words 
like the wideness in the sea. It is a prayer—a prayer 
so full of mercy, so tender, that it touches the very 
depths of our emotions. Any attempt to circumscribe 
or limit this great utterance of Jesus is a tragic blunder. 
I heard a distinguished minister make the attempt, 
before a great audience on a notable occasion, and the 
result was painful and regrettable. He attempted to 
show that when Jesus prayed this prayer, He did not 
include Judas nor the priests or scribes. According to 
this distinguished minister, these men did know what 
they were doing; and from this interpretation he 
hastened to argue a modern application to the World 
War and the enemies of democracy. Alas! that one 
should tamper with this great utterance in order to 
clinch a point or cite a moral. Did not Paul write that 
if those who put Jesus to death had known what they 
were doing they would not have crucified the Lord of 
Glory? When men sin they never know fully what 
they do. When we sin we do not know that we strike 
at the very heart of God, and that the blow hits home. 
Who of us ever sees sin as Jesus saw it from the cross? 
Yea, verily, this prayer of Jesus for His enemies is the 
climax of love and mercy. It is doubtful if any who 


98 IMITATION OF CHRIST 


thus heard Him speak these words could ever forget it. 
We have at least one example of the effect of this 
prayer made upon the life of an early follower of 
Jesus Christ. 


II 


Again, the scene is a martyrdom, and in all proba- 
bility the environing is Calvary again, since that was 
Jerusalem’s place of execution. Another young man 
was looking death in the face and about to die as a 
witness for truth—-a young man prominent in the 
Jerusalem Church, one of the seven deacons selected to 
serve that mother Church of Christ. His character 
was of singular grace and beauty. Having been 
charged with blasphemy against Moses and against 
God, he was put to trial before the Jewish Council. 
The defense he made before that august assembly is a 
marvel of sacred eloquence. In it he bore testimony 
of the promise made by the prophets and showed that 
Jesus, whom they had crucified, was the fulfiller of 
prophecy and the long-promised Messiah. The young 
man was brought to the place of execution. They care- 
fully prepared for the stoning, which was the sentence 
against him. They took off their outer garments and 
laid them at the feet of a young rabbi named Saul. 
Then they hurled the stones upon Stephen; and with 
sickening thud they crashed upon him. The young 
man kneeled down and, almost with dying breath, 
prayed, saying, “‘ Lord Jesus, receive my spirit,” and 
then cried with a loud voice, ‘“‘ Lord, lay not this sin to 
their charge.” 


EDGAR DEWITT JONES 99 


Here we have an echo of the voice of Jesus from the 
cross. The Saviour said, “ Father, forgive them; for 
they know not what they do.” His disciple, remember- 
ing the words of his Lord, in like manner prayed, ‘“‘ Lay 
not this sin to their charge.” ‘There is a similarity and 
a difference in the prayers. Jesus prays to God; 

tephen prays to Jesus. Jesus says of His execution- 
ers that they know not what they do. Stephen, who 
knew not their minds, prayed for their forgiveness; 
and herein he followed the example of his Lord in the 
all-important matter of a forgiving spirit. Here, within 
a few years, perhaps months, the example of Jesus on 
the cross is emulated by one of His disciples. Between 
the stoning of Stephen and his prayer for the pardon of 
his executioners, and the death of Jesus with His words 
so full of tenderness and love, there is a close and inti- 
mate relationship. Stephen learned the forgiveness of 
his enemies in the school of Jesus Christ. They 
gnashed on him with their teeth; they rushed on him 
savagely. He had not a single friend to stand by him. 
At his martyrdom there was no one to parallel the little 
group at the foot of the cross whose hearts were full of 
love and sympathy for Jesus. Even so Stephen prayed 
the great prayer, and so he found fellowship in the 
spirit with his Lord. 

Was Stephen present at the crucifixion? Did he see 
the Christ hanging there? Did he hear the words, 
‘“‘ Father, forgive”? Wedo not know. But if he was 
not present, he knew what occurred; and the story of 
Jesus’ dying words inspired him to die in the same 
wonderful way. 


100 IMITATION OF CHRIST 


III 

Scene the third is the prison cell in the city of Rome. 
The cell is small and lighted by a single window. By 
the rays of light that straggle through that window a 
man is seen writing at a table. He is prematurely aged. 
His back bears the marks of many scourgings. His 
face is weather-beaten; but his eyes are aflame with a 
great light. The one time Saul of Tarsus, now the 
apostle Paul, is the prisoner bending over the parch- 
ment. He is come up to the end of his eventful career. 
World traveler, great missionary, scholar and minister 
of the gospel of Jesus Christ. How wonderful is his 
life! This is the man who had been shipwrecked, lied 
about, and scorned. This is the man who had spoken 
to the philosophers in Athens from the famous Mars 
Hill; the man who had spoken before kings and 
queens; the man who had addressed mobs in the street 
at the peril of his life; the man who had written letters 
to the churches that the world would never let die. 

And now this man is writing the last letter, and it is 
directed to Timothy, his son in the gospel. As he ap- 
proaches the close he becomes personal. He asks Tim- 
othy for the cloak that he left at Troas. His cell is 
damp; he would have his great coat. He tells him to 
bring the books, when he comes, especially the parch- 
ments. The days are drab. He would read and write 
and so spend fruitfully the days of imprisonment. 
Next he refers to the great trial that had come upon 
him. He speaks of a defense that he made when no 
one took his part but all forsook him. And then, oh 
marvelous fact, he offers a prayer for those who 


EDGAR DEWITT JONES 101 


wronged him. He writes, “ May it not be laid to their 
account.” Where did Paul learn so great a spirit of 
forgiveness? From Jesus on the cross? Nay, not 
directly. He learned it from Stephen, who learned it 
from Christ. Charles Lamb said that he learned pa- 
tience from his mother, and that his mother learned 
patience from Christ. 

The memory of the death of Stephen must have ever 
remained fresh in the mind of Paul. He was consent- 
ing to that young man’s death; he saw his fair young 
face shining with a great hope; he saw the executioners 
rush in upon Stephen, and he beheld the stones they 
hurled upon his defenseless body; he saw Stephen when 
he knelt; he heard him when he called upon the Lord, 
saying, ‘‘ Lord Jesus, receive my spirit’; he heard him 
when he cried with a loud voice, ‘“ Lord, lay not this 
sin to their charge.” That scene was indelibly stamped 
upon the young rabbi’s mind; and years afterwards, at 
the close of his long and useful life, while awaiting the 
- death sentence in a Roman prison, the dying act of 
Stephen came freshly to his mind. Writing to Timothy 
thus, he was enabled to speak of the wrong done him 
without any thought of revenge or malice, and almost 
in the identical words of Stephen, he said of those who 
forsook him, ‘“‘ May it not be laid to their account.” 

Oh, blessed chain of hallowed influence. First Jesus 
on the cross remembers His enemies, only to pray, 
“ Father, forgive them; for they know not what they 
do”; then the young Stephen, as the cruel stones are 
hurled against him, remembers his Saviour’s attitude 
under similar circumstances, and cries, ‘‘ Lord, lay not 


102 IMITATION OF CHRIST 


this sin to their charge ”’; and finally, the apostle Paul, 
at the end of his long service as a Christian mission- 
ary, recalls an experience of pain and suffering, but 
remembering the dying words of Stephen, is enabled 
to pray that those who wronged him may be forgiven. 
Oh, blessed emulation of the spirit of the Master of 
us all! 


IV 


The early disciples were imitators of Him, or better 
yet, they were “ followers,” for that is the meaning of 
the word in the original. Stephen emulated his Lord in 
dying, although his death was not by crucifixion; Paul 
followed the example of Stephen, although the precise 


circumstances were not the same. This is the point to © 


remember when we speak of imitating Christ. It is 
possible to confuse the transient with the permanent, 
the incidental with the main course of His teaching. 
Well it is for us to remember that the letter killeth but 
the spirit giveth light. Copying Christ is not without 
its perils. Jesus is usually portrayed by the artists 
with His hair worn long and parted in the middle, wear- 
ing a pointed beard, with His body clad in a long flow- 
ing garment and with sandals on His feet. To imitate 
His dress or any of the customs of His day and the 
people from which He sprang is a matter of no impor- 
tance whatsoever. That was the incidental, the transi- 
tory. What He wore, what He ate, how or where He 
slept—these matters are immaterial to us. But to pos- 
sess His attitude toward God and man, to reproduce 
His habits of prayer, His sacrificial love, His spirit of 


EDGAR DeWITT JONES 103 
forgiveness, His love for little children, His freedom 
from prejudice, His sensitive conscience against in- 
justice to the poo the weak and the humble—in short, 
to possess His mind—this is the real imitation of the 
Christ. 

What a fascinating study is this—the effect of 
Jesus’ example upon Stephen and the result of 
Stephen’s example upon Paul. What rich food for 
thought it supplies. Seek ye Jesus’ mind, and from 
that will issue Christ-like deeds. Think Christ’s 
thoughts after Him, and it follows, as day the night, 
that your feet will find the way of mercy. Seek His 
mind, and your hands will respond to the manifold 
ministerings that assuage grief and heal the broken 
heart. And what an uplift to our souls is the example 
of others who have sought out the Christ and have 
given their lives in ennobling and enriching service. 
Others have discovered the Christ spirit and have ap- 
plied it. In turn, we take up the quest, discover the 
Christ, and display to the world the spirit of mercy, 
forgiveness, kindness and love. For us and for others 
to become the imitation of Christ comes about through 
the heart-cleansed lives of those going on before. 

‘“‘ Have this mind in you, which was also in Jesus 
Christ; who, existing in the form of God, counted not 
the being on an equality with God a thing to be 
grasped, but emptied himself, taking on the form of a 
servant, being made into the likeness of men; and 
being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, 
becoming obedient even unto death, yea, the death of 
the cross.” 


104 IMITATION OF CHRIST 


“TI cannot put the Presence by, of him, the crucifiea, 

Who moves men’s spirits with his love as doth the 
moon the tide; 

Now I see the life he lived, the god-like death he diea. 


“Again I see upom the cross that great soul-battle 
fought, 
Into the texture of the world the tale of which 1s 
qrought 
Until it hath become the woof of human deed and 
thought,— 


“And, joining with the cadenced bells that all the 
morning fill 
His cry of agony doth yet my inmost being thrill, 
Like some fresh grief from yesterday that tears the 
heart-strings still. 


“TI cannot put his presence by, I meet him every- 


where; 

I meet him in the country town—the busy-market 
square ; 

The mansion and the tenement attest his presence 
there. 


“Upon the funneled ships at sea he sets his shining 
feet; 
The distant ends of empire not in vain his name 
repeat,— 
And, like the presence of the rose, he makes the 
whole world sweet. 


“Fle comes to break the barriers down raised up by 
barren creeds; 
Above the globe from zone to zone, like sunlight he 
proceeds; 
Fle comes to give the world’s starved heart the 
perfect love tt needs,— 


EDGAR DeWITT JONES 105 


“The Christ, whose friends have played him false, 
whom dogmas have belied, 
Still speaking to the hearts of men—tho’ shamed and 
crucified, 
The Master of the centuries, who will not be 
denied!” 


PRAVER 


O God of infinite compassion, of love ineffable, unto 
thee all must come. Thou hast shown us the life abundant 
through thy son, our Saviour. Thou hast revealed through 
him the way of peace and power and plenty. Yet we are 
slow to apprehend and hesstant to follow the Prince of 
Peace. Forgwe, Lord, our childish prejudices, our 
strange and inexcusable hates, our foolish pride and 1n- 
tolerance. By the memory of the cross and the Christ who 
suffered there, help us to banish all hate from our hearts. 
Strengthen us, we pray thee, m our purpose to learn 
forgweness in the school of Christ. In his dear name. 
Amen, 


= 
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Nt 

ee PSN ety 
BOA ysis 
he LENO 


Ay 





ALVIN E. MAGARY 


San Francisco was the birthplace of Dr. Magary. His 
collegiate education was received on the Pacific Coast, 
together with his training in the San Francisco Theolog- 
ical Seminary. Later, he was granted the M.A. degree 
from Columbia University and was graduated from Au- 
burn Theological Seminary. His last pastorate before 
coming to Detroit was at the First Presbyterian Church 
in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, where with infinite care and deter- 
mined will be builded his church into the plan and spirit of 
the great builder. It was in 1924 that Dr. Magary came 
to the Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church; and yet 
in such a short time he has commanded the interest and 
respect of the religious life of the city. Without attempt 
at display he has gone to work to lay strong foundations 
and to build faithfully upon foundations already well laid. 
Such is the high task of the true minister of Jesus Christ. 
His book Character and Happiness published in 1924 and 
his editorial writings in the Detroit Free Press have given 
him a wide congregation of loyal friends. With a min- 
istry so well begun there is great promise for the future. 

It is not every man that can make the Scripture vivid 
and real to his congregation, whereby it becomes applicable 
to modern life; but Dr. Magary can do this invaluable 
thing. And in the doing of it he is reaching a multitude 
of people in a positive fashion, binding them to the eternal 
truths. 


THE PARSON—There was a day when the parson 
was assumed to be the most cultivated man in the commu- 
nity. He was a student, a minister, and a man of God. 
If any one had called him a mixer or a live wire, he would 
have been far from flattered. 

My ideal of the mister is perhaps old-fashioned. I 
do not belteve that religion can be interpreted to this or 
any age by men whose chief qualification 1s a fussy be- 
nevolence and whose highest skill is in advertising either 
themselves or their churches. 

More than any other thing, our age needs preachers 
with prophetic viston. They need not dwell in a world 
apart; but they must be given time to dwell apart from 
the world. The man who has an appointment for every 
hour of the day will not grow into that grace of mind and 
soul which has always been characteristic of the great 
ministries—ALVIN FE, Macary. 


Vil 
TRAITS OF THE RELIGIOUS SOUL 


ALVIN E. MAGARY, D.D. 
Woodward Avenue Presbyterian Church 


TTiCor24: 


“In this ministry,” says Paul, “I never lose heart. 


I may be harried on every side, yet I am free. I may 
be perplexed, yet I am never in despair. I am perse- 
cuted, but never forsaken. Though I am struck down 
I know that I cannot be destroyed. The light of God 
shines within me; the troubles of this life shall give 
place to enduring peace; and when this temporary tent 
which I call my body is taken down, I shall have a 
better home eternal in the heavens.” 

That is the confession of faith of the religious man. 
He is not blind to the miseries of human life. He does 
not deceive himself by glossing over the dark spots of 
human experience with fugitive and meretricious col- 
ors. He looks courageously at the real world with its 
trials, affliction, and unhappiness; but beyond these 
things he sees a brightening future. He knows that 
man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward; yet he 
believes there is a haven of peace, where the waters are 
still. He is able to look without flinching at the fact of 
death because he knows that eternal life is the ultimate 
portion of mankind. 


109 


110 TRAITS OF THE RELIGIOUS SOUL 


This chapter suggests some of the traits of the re- 
ligious soul. It is assumed that religious people are 
good; but goodness alone is not enough to mark off the 
man of faith from his unbelieving neighbor. Goodness 
is by no means confined to those who profess belief in 
God. So far as human standards are concerned, mil- 
lions of those who profess no belief fulfill the require- 
ments of goodness. They are benevolent, patriotic, 
industrious, and honorable; but there must be some- 
thing more to make the life of faith. A good man is a 
glorious vindication of nature; but it is the glory of 
religious faith that its fruit is goodness and something 
beyond goodness. 

One trait of the religious soul, which is clearly 
manifest on every page of Paul’s writings, is the sense 
of the immediacy of God. “God who commanded 
the light to shine out of darkness hath shined in my 
heart.” 

One of the faults of Christian theology is that it 
habitually has thrust some medium between the soul 
and God. This medium might be a priest, a ceremony, 
a creed, a church, or a Bible. That these things are of 
great value we do not deny. There is a priestly as well 
as a prophetic function. We believe in the lofty mis- 
sion of the Church and the value of its observances; 
we know that the Bible has been the fountain from 
which millions have drawn comfort and assurance; we 
believe in the preaching of the word which has kept 
taut the moral nerve of hosts of men and women; but 
above all we believe in that sense of God’s presence 
which comes to men and transcends priest or Church 


ALVIN E. MAGARY 111 


or Bible. When we are alone or in company, when we 
are busy or idle, at work or at play, at home or abroad, 
in the quiet house of worship or among the crowds of 
the street, at prayer or at business, there must be times 
when we know that the spirit of the divine bears direct 
and immediate witness of His presence with us. 

It is a trait of the religious soul that it hears and 
recognizes this voice of God for itself. All the noise of 
the world, with its pursuit of wealth and pleasure, can- 
not overwhelm the still small voice of the divine. 
Through all the discord, all man’s inhumanity to men, 
the music of the eternal voice ought never be lost. 
Amid the darkness and uncertainty of this human pil- 
grimage the clear light of God’s presence need never be 
quite hidden from us. 

When the little boat was tossing perilously on the 
sea and the frightened disciples were expecting to be 
engulfed, it was the quiet voice of the Lord which 
stilled not oniy the wind and waves but also the fearful 
tumult of their own hearts. When we feel that He is 
with us we can find quiet in. the midst of confusion and 
conflict. And if one is to have quiet in this life, he 
must have it within himself. There are blessed times 
when by the shore of the sea or among the hills, we do | 
have surcease from the noise of the world; but such | 
hours are rare and only serve as occasional respites 
from the grinding clamor of our daily life. It is char- 
acteristic of the religious soul that, amid the daily 
clamor, it is enabled to keep its poise. 

We live in the midst of distracting commonplaces. 
The average household’s solicitude about the furnace, 


112 TRAITS OF THE RELIGIOUS SOUL 


its discipline of children, its worries about money, and 
its anxieties about a hundred trifling things—‘‘ what we 
shall eat and what we shall drink and wherewithal we 
shall be clothed ’”—these are the things that wear us 
into nervous ruin. Man awakes in the morning to the 
barking of dogs, the rattling of bottles and the clatter 
of the kitchen. He goes to work amid the rumbling of 
street cars and the blowing of whistles. All the day 
long there is the ceaseless ringing of the telephone, the 
hammering of typewriters, the countless and insistent 
sounds of the city. So the day goes on, coming to its 
close at last with the banging of pianos, the raucous 
voices of the phonograph and the diabolical shrieks of 
the radio. 

Tranquillity is the result of the deep view of life. It 
comes only to those who have learned to live among the 
disturbances of the world without being disturbed by 
them. ‘‘ Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy 
presence from the pride of men. Thou shalt keep them 
secretly in a pavilion from the strife of tongues.” 

Our neighbors heckle us with false convictions, 
paltry ambitions, and censorious criticisms. Even 
when our intentions toward each other are most ami- 
able, we irritate each other. The nervous strain of 
mere human contact accumulates, until we burst out 
angrily and give pain to those we love. 

Being human is at times a trying business because 
it involves constant impingements on the lives of 
others. It is impossible to live without others, and it is 
often hard to live with them. 

“Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy pres- 


ALVIN E. MAGARY 113 


ence.” We all love the silences of the deep woods or 
the stretches along the beach where we can walk a few 
hundred yards away from the crowd and feel that we 
are alone. Some of us have felt these things; but we 
can all feel a thing yet greater. We can know the 
immediate presence of God in the midst of the streets, 
where the crowds jostle us and life’s discords assail 
our ears. 

Thomas Carlyle, while peculiarly sensitive to the dis- 
cords of life, was a man in whom there was a deep, 
abiding consciousness of God. His sense of the divine 
presence is revealed as he meditates on the events of 
the night before the battle of Dunbar. He thinks of 
the confusion of the night, of the treasons, of the strate- 
gies and ambitions of men; and he writes, ‘‘ The 
hoarse sea moans, swinging low and heavy against 
these whinstone bays; the sea and the tempest are 
abroad and all else asleep but we—and there is One 
that rides on the wings of the wind.” 

There is another aspect of this which touches us 
just now. The religious soul has no fear concerning 
the permanency of religion. We live in a time of 
change and threatened change, of intellectual and moral 
confusion. Men fear that the foundations are being 
destroyed and that God is dying out of the hearts of 
men. A want of trust in the future begets bitterness, 
hate, and intolerance. Men fight most bitterly for 
most hopeless causes; and the pious pessimist is always 
prone to forget that love is the first of Christ’s com- 
mandments. The religious soul is magnanimous be- 
cause it is sure that God is both able and willing to 


114 TRAITS OF THE RELIGIOUS SOUL 


steer His world through the mazes of doubt and failure 
to ultimate redemption. 

Courage is a trait of the religious soul. We are 
sometimes led to think of Jesus as a mild-spoken 
philosopher who went about uttering sweet thoughts 
and being kind to people. We forget that He was the 
most magnificently brave figure in history. It is when 
we achieve the consciousness of the divine that fear 
ceases to trouble us. It is when our hope is not in God 
that our souls are disquieted within us. ‘ God is our 
refuge and strength. Therefore we will not fear 
though the earth be moved and the waters roar and 
be troubled. The Lord of hosts is with us. The God 
of refuge is our refuge.” 

The soul that abides in Christ is enriched with the 
unsearchable riches of God. ‘‘ All things are for your 
sakes.”” In a day when the thoughts of men are turn- 
ing to material gain, it is good to be reminded that life 
does not consist in the abundance of the things which 
we possess. It must be a trait of the religious soul that 
it appraises the various parts of life with competent 
discrimination. Many of us are deceived as to the rela- 
tive value of these prizes, rewards, and accomplish- 
ments which offer themselves to us. We toil through 
many a weary year to get what we want, only to dis- 
cover that it was not worth the getting. 

It must be a trait of the religious soul that it knows 
what is worth while. The true member of God’s King- 
dom is like a merchant seeking goodly pearls. He 
knows, with the judgment of an expert, what is genuine 
and what is false. He cannot be deceived with imita- 


ALVIN E. MAGARY 115 


tion jewels. About the man or woman who has really 
attained the religious life, there is a practical grasp of 
the meaning and worth of things. As the training of 
the artist enables him to see things in correct per- 
spective, so a true religious experience helps to put the 
parts of life in their right order. ‘‘ Why spend your 
money for that which satisfieth not? ” asks the prophet. 
The wasting of skill and strength in the acquiring of 
things which will never contribute to our happiness is 
one of the mistakes which a religious view of life will 
help us avoid. 

Insight is a trait of the religious soul. ‘‘ We look 
not at the things that are seen, but at the things that 
are not seen.” The religious man walks not by sight, 
but by insight, which is another word for faith. He is 
not prepossessed by the circumference of life. He 
knows something of what is at the center. As he looks 
upon the multitude of men, hungry and ragged, like 
those whom the Master fed, he sees more than a huddle 
of human bodies, more than a mob of discontented, 
wrangling, ineffective people. ‘The fact of Jesus 
Christ,” with its glow of God’s own glory, is there, and 
like the apostle he feels within himself the thrill of 
kinship with mankind. As we walk not by sight but 
by insight, so we love not by sight but by insight. If 
the religious soul is marked by its power to love, it is 
because faith opens our eyes to things pure and lovely 
which are not seen save by the discernment of the 
spirit. ‘‘ The light of the glorious gospel of Christ ” 
makes humanity glow with a beauty that incites in us a 
willingness to live and to die in the service of men. 


116 TRAITS OF THE RELIGIOUS SOUL 


It is a trait of the religious soul that it anticipates 
the future. It is true that we can dwell over-much on 
the thought of heavenly bliss. There is much to be 
done in the life we now live, and too much pre- 
occupation with another life may become a barrier to 
practical usefulness in the present. Yet, if man is 
mortal, that fact must never be allowed to fade out of 
his thinking. In the continuation of his personal con- 
fession Paul says, “‘ We- know that if the earthly house 
of this tabernacle were dissolved we have a building of 
God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens.” No life can be complete in which there is 
not a place for thoughts of heavenly things. 

There will always be a suggestion of this heavenly 
quality in the life that is close to the divine. Richard 
Watson Gilder, the poet and editor, once wrote in a 
letter, ‘ While in Washington I passed the Harwood 
navy residence. If there is a heaven and I get there, 
it will not take me long to find the Harwood house. 
Their house has always been heaven to me. I shall 
never forget that dear Miss Bessie.” Who this Miss 
Bessie may have been that made a poet think of 
heaven, I do not know; but we have all known women 
like her. 

The earthly tabernacle of this body sometimes seems 
very frail, and yet its frailty carries promise of some- 
thing better to come. Here we have no continuing city. 
We are dwellers in tents, and look for a city which 
has foundations. One is reminded of that magnificent 
poem which Shakespeare puts into the part of one of 
his characters in ‘‘ The Tempest.’”’ A vision of earthly 


ALVIN E. MAGARY 117 


splendor has been called up for the entertainment of 
the guests, and as it fades the magician speaks: 


“ Our revels now are ended, these our actors, 
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and 
Are melted into air, thin air; 

And, like the baseless fabric of this vision, 
The cloud-capped towers, gorgeous palaces, 
The solemn temple, the great globe itself, 
Yea, and all which it inherit, shall dissolve 
And, like this insubstantial pageant fade, 
Leave not a rack behind, Weare such stuff 
As dreams are made on, and our little life 
Is rounded with a sleep.” 


The transiency of human institutions is made pathet- 
ically vivid to us when we visit the homes of our child- 
hood and find the old landmarks gone, the old leaders 
dead, and all the outer aspects changed. Like an in- 
substantial pageant the world of one generation fades 
as the succeeding one comes upon the scene. That is 
why the heart of man is lifted up as he sings, ‘“‘ They 
stand, those walls of Zion, all jubilant with song.” The 
mind finds rest in the thought of things which endure. 

So the religious soul finds all the security that man 
can know amid the insubstantialities of life. When 
mankind reels in wrong, when blood and battle are 
abroad, when pestilence stalks through the night and 
arrows of destruction fly about us in the day, the man 
who truly knows God goes confidently on, unfaltering 
and unafraid. 

‘“ All things are for our sakes,” says Paul, “ the un- 
searchable riches of God are ours.” It matters not 
that we are like men who carry treasure in vessels of 


118 TRAITS OF THE RELIGIOUS SOUL 


sun-baked clay, easily shattered by the accidents of our 
pilgrimage. Our very weakness is our strength. We 
are supremely fit to do the work of the Eternal because 
we are powerless without Him. ‘ Therefore, as we 
have received mercy, we faint not.” The religious soul 
is confident because it is humble; fearless because it 
fears God; rich because it is glad to be poor; and 
happy because, like its Master, it is acquainted with 
grief. 

“We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; 
perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not for- 
saken; cast down, but not destroyed. For which cause 
we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet 
the inward man is renewed day by day. And we know 
that when the earthly house of this tabernacle is 
destroyed, we have a building of God, a house not 
made with hands, eternal in the heavens.” 


PRAYER 

Almighty God, thou friend of man, forgive us if we 
have not known thy friendship as we should. Forgive us, 
if in the bewildering hurry of our daily life, we have 
failed to see thy face as often as thou hast revealed thy- 
self. Open our eyes, O God, to the things unseen by the 
worldling. So teach us that we may do our work as well 
as any man, enjoy the pleasures. thou vouchsafest us with 
the heartmess of children, take our place competently sn 
the activities of the world, and keep free for thine occu- 
pancy thine own place in our hearts. Grant us tranquillity 
with peace. Help us to be gentle and yet strong, meek and 
yet courageous, free and yet obedient. Let us walk with 
Christ the way of service and lift up our hearts with the 
faith that sustained him. These things, we pray thee, 
grant us for his name’s sake. Amen. 


S. S. MARQUIS 


The Scotch-Irish of Sharon, Ohio, have given Dr. Mar- 
quis to us. His collegiate training was received at Alle- 
gheny College and his theological schooling at General and 
Cambridge Theological Seminaries, being graduated from 
the latter in 1893. In the same year he was ordained to 
the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal Church. His 
first parishes were in Massachusetts, after which he min- 
istered in St. Joseph’s Church, Detroit, for several years. 
In 1906 he became Dean of Saint Paul’s Cathedral and 
was the loved leader of that great church for ten years. 
While at Saint Paul’s he became interested in social ser- 
vice, and finally was persuaded to become Head of the 
Sociological Department of Ford’s Automobile Industry. 
For five years he made an exceedingly close study of every 
human problem that was produced in that great organiza- 
tion and was eminently successful in that field. But his 
call was to the ministry and he went back to St. Joseph’s 
for a second pastorate, which was a very happy and fruit- 
ful one. Recently he has been called to Christ Church, 
Bloomfield Hills, where he will not only build a great 
church but will also develop the Cranbrook School for 
boys under the direction and control of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church. Few men have a wider sphere of in- 
fluence in college halls or civic bodies over our country. 
A wide intellectual outlook has been added to his social 
passion and spiritual vision—a rare combination and one 
that makes him a leader in breaking down intolerance and 
bigotry. Dr. Marquis ought to write more. His one book, 
“Henry Ford, An Interpretation,” is certainly the best 
book we have on that subject; and his way of handling it 
betokens ability which he should not hide. 


BREAKING DOWN ECCLESIASTICAL WALLS 
OF PREJUDICE—The sky of the religious world ito 
which I was born was perpetually overcast by theological 
clouds. I breathed an atmosphere filled with doctrinal 
fog. In my youth the chief source of my unhappiness was 
my religion. I was ordered to believe things I could not 
believe. I was expected to subscribe to things I could not 
understand. Much that was taught me seemed to have no 
relatson to every-day, christian living. Agatst this there 
flamed up within me the spirit of revolt. I felt mstinc- 
tively that above the doctrinal fog I breathed, and above 
the theological clouds which hid the Sun of Righteousness, 
there was a Light on which one could look without the aid 
of glasses that had been ecclesiastically colored. Through 
much mental agony I came finally through expersence into 
the presence of that Light. The urge to tell others of what 
I had found led me into the ministry. A divided Church 
fills me with shame and indignation. I belong to one of 
its fragments because there seems nothing else to do. As 
I see wt, more can be done by working from within than 
by standing aloof. I long for the fellowship of Christian 
men from whom I am separated by trivial doctrinal dif- 
ferences. I want to see sectarian walls broken down. 
The driving motive of my ministry, so far as I am aware 
of tt—the ideal before me as a preacher—has been to 
weaken these walls, to break down within men within the 
reach of my voice thew unchristian, ecclesiastical preju- 
dices. I do not believe that christian fellowship is to be 
approached through some agreement as to faith and or- 
ders. But I do believe that a working agreement on faith 
and orders may be reached through fellowship. 

—S. S. Margulis. 


VIII 


COMING GIANTS AND THE ARIS- 
TOCRACY OF THE FUTURE 


Bay) ES) TT 
Christ Church—Bloomfield Hills 


“ There were giants in the earth in those days.’—GsEn. 6: 4. 


“ Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth.” 
—Marr. 5:5. 


I. ARISTOCRACY 


Traces of those changes which have taken place in 
the outward, physical forms of life on this planet are 
to be found buried in the rocks. Evidences of the 
development of an inward, spiritual life are to be seen 
embedded in human language. 

Emerson has said that language is “ fossil poetry.” 
He means by this, writes Archbishop Trench, that 
‘just as in some fossil, curious and beautiful shapes 
of vegetable or animal life, the graceful fern or the 
finely vertebrated lizard, such as now, it may be, have 
been extinct for thousands of years, are permanently 
bound up with the stone, and rescued from that perish- 
ing which would have otherwise been theirs—so in 
words are beautiful thoughts and images, the imagina- 
tion and the feeling of past ages, of men long since in 
their graves, of men whose very names have perished, 
these, which would so easily have perished too, pre- 
served and made safe forever.” 


121 


122 THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE FUTURE 


In this word aristocracy we have a fine specimen of 
linguistic fossil. It is the verbal remains of a beautiful 
idea. It is but the shell of its former self. Its original 
meaning has gone out of it. Base ideas have crept into 
it and made it their abode. It was created to designate 
a ruling class chosen to be such because of character 
and ability. It was intended to be taken literally. It 
meant just what it said,—the rule of the best. But, 
like many another noble word, it has been emptied of 
its original meaning and made the vehicle of ideas 
which are the opposite of those it originally conveyed. 

Words, like human beings, have their ups and downs 
in this world. Some, rising from the level of slang, 
enter finally the sacred precincts of the inner literary 
circle. Others of the most cultured and refined origin 
get into bad company and sink at last into the linguistic 
slums. This word aristocracy has become a degener- 
ate. Originally intended to designate a ruling class 
selected on account of character and ability, it came 
in time to mean a class of people who rested their claim 
to the right to rule on the accident of birth regardless 
of inherent qualifications. One downward step more 
and we find it appropriated by those who have neither 
birth nor ability, but wealth only. Thus, from a word 
of the highest rank in meaning, it has fallen to a level 
where it is used as a Synonym for snobbery. But there 
will ever remain in this word some suggestion of the 
root whence it was derived. And to some of us this 
suggestion will be taken as a prophecy of that which is 
to come. For we believe that the world will come ulti- 
mately to the recognition of moral and spiritual. leader- 


S. S. MARQUIS 123 


ship. Some day there will rise an aristocracy which 
shall be such in the best and highest sense of the word. 


II, GIANTS 


The writer of Genesis, looking backward, says, 
‘“ There were giants in the earth in those days.” Jesus, 
looking forward, says, “‘ Blessed are the meek: for 
they shall inherit the earth.” It is a far cry between 
these statements, one of history, the other of prophecy, 
but I have brought them together because they set 
before us two types of man,—the first and the last. 
The one a physical type; the other a spiritual. The 
one a giant in brute force; the other a giant with God- 
like strength. The one lord of the earth in the begin- 
ning; the other the inheritor and master of the earth 
in the end. The first ruled for an age; the second 
shall reign through the ages. 

There are three forces in man,—brute, intellectual 
and spiritual. For this reason human history falls, 
with broad dividing lines, into three ages,—the age of 
the physical giant, the age of the intellectual giant, and 
the age of the moral and spiritual giant. The rule of 
the earth is, has been, and will continue to be, by its 
giants. The world’s giants have been, and will con- 
tinue to be, the types of their respective ages. 

In saying what I have just said I would not be un- 
derstood as meaning that man has exercised first one of 
his powers and then another. He has employed them 
all at all times, but one or another has so far dominated 
that it has given its character to an age. One age, the 
physical, has been; one, the intellectual, now is; the 


124 THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE FUTURE 


third, the moral and spiritual, is yet to come—for I 
believe that the meek shall inherit the earth. Because 
I believe in God, I believe that good will triumph, that 
Jesus Christ is the second Adam, the first born of a 
new and spiritual race which its service, rendered in 
meekness and humility, will become the master and 
ruler of the earth. 


Til. THE PHYSICAL GIANT AND THE ARISTOCRARY 
OF BRAWN 


‘There were giants in the earth in those days.” 
This is no mere fancy, but a fact. It is not merely the 
statement of a child’s story-book, but the record of 
history. I do not mean to say that men in the begin- 
ning were so much bigger physically than they are now 
that they deserved to be called giants. What I have in 
mind is the fact that those of superior physical strength 
ruled their fellows. Victors in physical encounter, they 
were feared by others. They became leaders through 
sheer brute force. They were the aristocrats in that 
old, savage world order. They were honored, and the 
stories of their mighty deeds were handed down from 
generation to generation. They left upon the race in 
its childhood an impression which even yet has not 
been entirely outgrown. 

In the order of time the physical life in man is first. 
Of his complex being, the physical is the only part he 
brings into the world relatively well developed. He is 
born. He feels the pangs of hunger, but if his life were 
to depend upon his power of mind he would perish. 
Of the differences between right and wrong he knows 


S. S. MARQUIS 125 


nothing. His physical life dominates him. And as the 
physical life dominates man in the hour of his birth, so 
did it rule the race in its infancy. The highest type of 
man was the physical—the giants, the Samsons and 
the Goliaths—the man with the broadest shoulders, the 
strongest arms, and who towered highest above his 
fellows. 

There may not have been an evolution of man from 
a lower animal, but there is no denying the fact that 
there has been an evolution of man from a lower man. 
It is a fact that man began life on a far lower level in 
the scale of being than that on which he now stands. 
Since his first appearance on this earth the changes 
which have taken place in his physical being, and par- 
ticularly in his mental and moral life, have been 
enormous. 

If we turn our admiring gaze from the branches of 
our ancestral tree and begin searching among its roots, 
we will come eventually upon a man who is little better 
than his fellow animals. We will find him engaged in a 
struggle very similar to that of the beasts of the jungle. 
Compelled to measure his strength with theirs, and with 
that of his equally savage fellow man, he is forced, as 
the first step necessary to his existence, to develop 
himself psysically. And we will also discover that we 
are living today because that primitive man, down to 
whom lead the roots of our much-boasted family tree, 
was a better fighter, fiercer, stronger, and more cruel 
than those who perished at his hands. 

The original ruler of men was a giant,—a man of 
brute strength, of great physical endurance, the victor 


126 THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE FUTURE 


in physical encounters. The first aristocracy was an 
aristocracy of brawn. 


IV. THE INTELLECTUAL GIANT AND THE ARISTOCRACY 
OF BRAWN 


The primitive aristocracy of brawn gradually dis- 
appeared. ‘There is an old saying to the effect that 
each generation grows weaker and wiser. Perhaps that 
is but another way of-saying that brute force is ever 
being met and overcome by the force of mind. The 
savage who trusted to his unaided arm went down 
before his weaker but more ingenious foe armed with 
the arrow or the sling, as Goliath fell before the shep- 
herd boy David. The giant of brawn bowed before 
the giant of brain. The physical aristocracy of an 
early age gave way to the intellectual aristocracy of a 
later time. 

The change from the first to the second age came 
gradually, indeed, taking the race as a whole, it is still 
in progress. Brute force has by no means ceased to be 
a power in the world. War is not a thing of the past. 
The prospect that it will be done away is growing 
brighter, however, and we believe that the time is not 
far distant when the power of the spirit of the beast in 
man, the lingering influence of the old physical giant, 
will be broken, and brute force in no form, savage or 
civilized, will be appealed to in the settlement of the 
disputes between men. 

We are living in the age of the intellectual giant, 
and we have an intellectual aristocracy of two kinds. 
First, there lingers an old titled aristocracy in cer- 


S. S. MARQUIS 127 


tain quarters which is the product of mind devoted 
to the pursuits of war for the purpose of conquest 
and the enslavement of weaker nations,—an aris- 
tocracy of mind, but of mind devoted to the devel- 
opment and use of material force. And then there 
has appeared more recently an untitled, moneyed 
aristocracy—the actual ruling aristocracy of this age 
—which is the product of mind devoted to peaceful 
vocations. 

When the intellectual giant first came on the stage 
it was but natural that he should give much of his time 
to the pursuit of war. The brutal methods of the first 
age,—the ideals, the spirit, and the influence of aris- 
tocracy of brawn still lingered. The new giant was 
forced to meet the old on his own ground and with his 
own weapons. In the transition period between the 
old and the new, intelligence was compelled to become 
the ally of brute force. 

But, as centuries went by, the intellectual giant gave 
an ever increasing share of his time to peaceful pur- 
suits. He began to gather herds. In a crude way he 
tilled the soil. Human relationships outside the family 
were recognized. Families grew into tribes, and tribes 
into nations. More time was given to agriculture, 
manufacture, commerce, art, science, and literature, 
and less to war. Instead of fighting for food, men 
began to barter, buy and sell. It is the same old 
principle of competition, it is true, but in a higher 
and more pacific form. The struggle is gradually 
carried up from the level of brute force to that of the 
intellectual. 


128 THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE FUTURE 


And so it comes to pass that a new type of man 
comes upon the scene. Another inheritor of the earth, 
the intellectual giant, arises. A new aristocracy, 
founded on wealth, begins to take into its hands the 
reins of the leading governments of the world. ‘This 
latest aristocracy is a commercial aristocracy—kings 
of the railroad, barons of coal and oil, lords of money, 
merchant princes. Such are the rulers and inheritors 
of the earth in these days. Such are the giants which 
the same old principle of competition that controlled 
men back in the jungle is producing in our time. 
These are the latest product of the old world order 
which, in one form or another, has obtained from the 
beginning. 


V. THE COMING GIANT AND THE ARISTOCRACY OF 
THE FUTURE 


Are we living in the last age? Is the intellectual 
giant the highest and final type of man? Is it such an 
one that creation has been groaning and travailing, 
through all these geologic and biologic ages, to bring 
forth? Is a commercial aristocracy the goal of the 
race? Has evolution consumed so much time, gone to 
all this fuss and preparation, to bring forth a modern 
king of finance? Had Whitman a billionaire in mind 
when he wrote: 


“Immense have been the preparations for me, 
Faithful and friendly the arms that have helped me. 
Cycles ferried my cradle, rowing and rowing like 

cheerful boatmen; 
For room for me stars kept aside in their own rings, 


S. S. MARQUIS 129 


They sent influences to look after what was to hold 
me. 


Before I was born out of my mother, generations 
guided me, 


My embryo was never torpid, nothing could overlay 
St. 

For it the nebula cohered to an orb, 

The long slow strata piled to rest it on, 

Vast vegetables gave it sustenance, 

Monstrous sauroids transported in their mouths 

And deposited it with care. 

All forces have been steadily employed to Corp leas 
and delight me, 


Are we to regard the plutocrat as the final type of 
man? Is he the crown of all creation and the inheritor 
of the earth? He is far from that, if we are to believe 
evolution and revelation, for both declare that “ man 
is not man as yet.” ‘There are prognostics of some- 
thing nobler yet to come. As the giant of brawn bowed 
before the giant of brain, so will the giant of brain bow 
in turn before the moral and spiritual giant. Not that 
men will have less brains in their heads, or less muscles 
on their bones, but more of the moral law in their 
hearts. 

The meek shall inherit the earth. A new age, with 
a new type of man, shall come. A new aristocracy will 
arise. It will laugh at wealth. In that age the million- 
aire will be an exotic. He will be regarded by the then 
reigning aristocracy as belonging to an outgrown and 
lower order of human life. He will continue for a time 
to have his admirers, just as the physical bully, the 
belated specimen of the aristocracy of brawn, finds 
today an admiring following in the lower stratum of 


180 THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE FUTURE 


society. You will find in those days some of the ex- 
pensive toys of the millionaire of the former age. They 
will be kept in museums, there to be looked upon with 
wonder, just as the millionaire of today looks upon the 
spear and coat of mail of the knight of the Middle 
Ages, or on the finery from the tomb of some ancient 
Egyptian king,—relics and symbols of the aristocracy 
which he has supplanted. It will be recalled that in 
the earlier days of the intellectual age, men gazed in 
astonishment on the ponderous old iron bedstead of 
Og, king of Bashan, who was the last of the “ remnant 
of the giants.” 

The coming age will have a new standard by which 
to measure men. It will judge them neither by the 
breadth of their shoulders nor by the wealth they pos- 
sess. Neither brute force nor wealth will count in the 
Kingdom of God, but character only. For the coming 
giant will be like Christ. The rule of the new aristoc- 
racy will be what it was meant to be,—the rule of 
the best. 


VI. THE OLD ORDER AND THE NEW 

‘“‘ Blessed are the meek,”—the world has never taken 
these words seriously. It laughs at those who do. 
They are ignorant of the ways of life; they are vision- 
ary; they are impractical. They are derided,—at best, 
pitied. 

‘““ Blessed are the poor,” says Jesus. The world 
smiles and replies, ‘‘ Blessed are the rich.” 

“Blessed are they that mourn.” ‘The world an- 
swers, “‘ Blessed are the gay and light-hearted.” 


S. S. MARQUIS 131 


‘Blessed are they that do hunger and thirst after 
righteousness.”” No,—‘‘ Blessed are they that follow 
after the pleasures of the world.” 

““ Blessed are the merciful.’”’ No,—‘‘ Blessed are the 
shrewd and heavy-handed.” 

“ Blessed are the peacemakers.” No,— Blessed 
are the fighters whose forts and fleets are strongest.” 

‘“‘ Blessed are the meek.” No,—‘‘ Blessed are the 
strong: for they shall inherit the earth.” 

So do the beatitudes of the new order clash with 
those of the old. 

I say that the world has not taken the Master seri- 
ously. The same is true of the Church. We say, and 
. do not. His words are constantly on our lips, but we 
neither believe them in our hearts nor practice them in 
our lives. He placed the emphasis on life. We have 
shifted it to belief. But the time has come when we 
must begin to take Him at His word. Foolish as His 
sayings may seem to men of the old order, nevertheless 
He spoke the truth. He put the emphasis where it 
belongs. The meek shall inherit the earth. The dream 
of the poet, the vision of the seer, the trend of evolu- 
tion, and the life realized in the Son of Man—these all 
point to the fulfilment of these words. Old types shall 
pass away. ‘The new spiritual giant is in the making. 
The old aristocracies shall fall before the new spiritual 
aristocracy whose head is Christ. The kingdoms of the 
world shall become His, and He shall reign forever and 
ever, King of kings, and Lord of lords. 


132 THE ARISTOCRACY OF THE FUTURE 


BRAY Ee 

Grant, O Father, that Christ may so dwell in us that 
His matchless spwrit of love and mercy and truth, together 
with His unflinching and uncompromssing loyalty to God, 
may become our disposition. Help us so to lwe that the 
mind that was in Him may be in us, and that His spirit 
may hasten the coming of His Kingdom; through the 
same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 


MINOT C. MORGAN 


A forward looking preacher stands in the pulpit made 
historic through the ministry of such stalwarts as Edward 
Pence, Wallace Radcliffe, and Arthur T.. Pierson. Dr. 
Minot C. Morgan was born in Princeton, New Jersey, in 
1876, growing up under the cultural and spiritual influ- 
ences of a Presbyterian Manse. Princeton University 
gave him his first wide outlook on life and Princeton 
Seminary opened the vistas still wider. After graduating 
from the Seminary in 1900 he was ordained to the minis- 
try of the Presbyterian Church, preaching with unusual 
favor in Long Island and New Jersey until 1917 when he 
was called to Fort Street Presbyterian Church of Detroit. 
Since that time he has been making an ever widening in- 
fluence throughout the state and nation, acting as Chair- 
man of the Trustee Board of Alma College, Trustee of 
Princeton Seminary, and Secretary of the Board of Edu- 
cation in his own denomination. His ministry in Detroit 
has been refreshing, vital, and commanding; his preaching 
has been intellectual, forceful, and convincing. ‘There is 
no hesitant note sounded by him in regard to industrial 
and social justice, and the summons of Jesus Christ to 
leave the old paths and pioneer in new and untried ways. 
Preaching as he does every Sunday to a large group of 
financial and industrial leaders he has revealed a binding 
loyalty to Jesus Christ that has won for him the respect of 
the entire city, and has actually kindled fires of glowing 
righteousness on countless thousands of hearts. What a 
gracious privilege to minister in such a way and in such 
a church! 


LOYALTY TO CHRIST—“ Ve did not choose me,” 
says Jesus, “but I chose you and appointed you,’ “ or- 
dained you” the old version has tt. And tt is no dtspar- 
agement of the rites of any ecclesiastical organization, to 
say, that His is the only ordination that really counts. The 
ceremonies of the Church possess a beauty and a value 
which none may gainsay, but they are impotent to clothe 
with spiritual power one whom Christ has not appointed, 
and though they be dented to one of His chosen, they can- 
not thwart his mimstry. Behind the laying on of hands by 
Bishop or by Presbytery, is that election to service of 
whech the Master spoke when He said, “I chose you.” 

Now tf I believe that this Jesus és the Christ, the Son of 
the Living God, who can say, “ All authorsty hath been 
given unto me in heaven and on earth,’ then I can con- 
ceive of no higher, no more impelling commission than 
His. It is futile to deny that Christianity is a religson of 
authority. One of our university professors in his dis- 
cussion of the religion of a mature mind, says m effect, 
that a religion, which cannot command, merits only the 
contempt of a full grown man. I rejoice to believe that 
my ministry is in fulfilment of a divine command ; other- 
wise I have missed my calling. I should certainly go at 
something else, unless I believed that He had ordained me 
to go and bear fruit, fruit that shall abide. He has called 
me to a task of enduring productivity, and in loyal obedi- 
ence to His appointment, I set myself, to do His will, or 
I am worthless. 

Loyalty to Christ however wmplies not only obedience, 
but love, love that is the response to His own and should 
have a like expression. As John says, “ Hereby know we 
love, because He laid down His life for us and we ought 
to lay down our lives for the brethren.” Love is the mo- 
tive power of all true mimstry, and finds its inevitable and 
joyous expression in Hits service who said, “ If ye love Me, 
ye will keep my commandments.”—Muinot C. Morcan. 


IX 
THE EYES OF A YOUNG MAN 


MINOT C. MORGAN, D.D. 
Fort Street Presbyterian Church 


“And Jehovah opened the eyes of the young man; ae he 
saw.”’—II Kines 6:17. 


This was God’s answer to a prophet’s prayer for a 
young man who could not see, and who did not know 
that he could not see. He knew rather, or thought he 
knew, that his eyesight was flawless. It was because 
those keen young eyes of his saw so much, that he was 
so frightened. 

Peacefully had he slept the night before in the quiet 
little city of Dothan and calmly had he risen at dawn, 
but before he set about his simple tasks in the service 
of his master the prophet, he went forth from the house 
to breathe the fragrant morning air and feast his eyes 
on the varied beauty of the encircling hills. But so far 
from giving him needful poise for the day’s duties, 
what he saw terrified him. With unmistakable clear- 
ness those piercing young eyes revealed to him not just 
quiet pasture lands and gently waving trees on hillsides, 
but a bristling host of soldiery with chariots and horses, 
completely surrounding the city, blocking every road 
and by-path, and making escape impossible. Rushing 
to Elisha, he cries with trembling lip, “‘ Alas! my mas- 


135 


136 THE EYES OF A YOUNG MAN 


ter, how shall we do? ” To which the prophet calmly 
answers, “‘ Fear not, for they that are with us are more 
than they that are with them.” “Is he blind? ” thinks 
the young man. ‘“ Have his old eyes grown so dull that 
he cannot see the extent of this besieging army, and 
imagines that the paltry company in little Dothan out- 
numbers this Syrian host? ” 

Ah! lad, you are the one that is blind, and those eyes 
of yours are so keen that you do not know it. You 
think that because you can see every flashing spear on 
yonder hill and every restive chariot horse that you can 
outsee the old prophet. Listen, boy, he is praying for 
you. Hear what he says. ‘ Jehovah, I pray thee, open 
his eyes, that he may see.” In amazement the young 
man feels the answer of the prayer. He sees, sees as 
he had never seen before, sees nearer than the circling 
hosts of Syria, the inner circle of the hosts of heaven. 
First he beheld just the threat of material force, then, 
with opened eyes, the glory of spiritual power and the 
assurance of redeeming love. 

Now the readiness with which God answered the 
prophet’s prayer is a revelation of the divine heart. It 
is indicative not only of His regard for an old man’s 
entreaty, but of His love for a young man’s soul and 
His longing that the eyes of the soul may see. So when 
men of old, speaking as they were moved by the Holy 
Spirit, declared a more wonderful revealing of God that 
was yet to be, they said, “‘ Then the eyes of the blind 
shall be opened and the ears of the deaf shall be un- 
stopped—and the ransomed of Jehovah shall return 
and come with singing unto Zion; and everlasting joy 


-MINOT C. MORGAN 137 


shall be upon their heads: they shall obtain gladness 
and joy and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.” 

And when at last prophetic promise found its fulfil- 
ment in God’s highest revelation of Himself to human- 
ity and in humanity, we behold the Man of Nazareth 
opening blind eyes. Indeed it was so distinctive of 
Jesus and so clear an indication of His Messiahship 
that when discouraged John the Baptist sent from the 
Herodian dungeon with the query, ‘‘ Art thou he that 
cometh or look we for another? ” the Master simply 
continued for a time His gracious ministry to human 
need and then said to the messengers, ‘‘ Go and tell 
John the things which ye hear and see: the blind re- 
ceive thei sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are 
cleansed, and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, 
and the poor have good tidings preached to them.” 

Beside the road near Jericho, there sat a blind beg- 
gar, the son of Timzus, well aware of his need and 
wretched in the poverty of his darkened world. Sud- 
denly his ear detects the tread of approaching feet and 
the hubbub of many voices. ‘“ What is it all about? ” 
he asks. “‘ Jesus of Nazareth passeth by,” is the an- 
swer. ‘“ Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me! ” 
he cries. ‘‘ What wilt thou that I should do unto 
thee? ” asks Jesus. ‘‘ Rabboni, that I may receive my 
sight,” is his eager entreaty. ‘‘ Go thy way,” says the 
Master, ‘thy faith hath made thee whole.” And 
straightway he received his sight and followed Him in 
the way. ‘“ Go my way, saidst thou, Lord? My way 
is now thy way. Clearly I see it and go that way 
with thee.”’ 


138 THE EYES OF A YOUNG MAN 


The Scripture gives us also the contrasting picture of 
another blind man, a young man of unusual beauty of 
countenance and character with eyes as clear and vision 
as keen as Elisha’s servant. Jesus, looking upon him, 
loved him, and longed to open his eyes, too. The young 
man was not wholly blind, to be sure, it was an interest 
in spiritual things that had brought him to Jesus: on 
his lips trembled the question, ‘ Good Teacher, what 
shall I do to inherit eternal life? ’’ Nevertheless, his 
love for material things so blinded him to spiritual 
values that when Jesus said to him, “ Sell all that thou 
hast and distribute to the poor and thou shalt have 
treasure in heaven: and come follow me,” the young 
man, despite all the beauty and grace of character 
which he possessed, could not see it. ‘‘ His counte- 
nance fell at the saying and he went away sorrowful, 
for he was one that had great possessions.” 

Ah! there is a pathos in the picture of Bartimeus, 
poor blind beggar, and fully aware of his blindness, but 
there is pathos greater still in the blindness of the rich 
young ruler, a blindness to spiritual values, a blindness 
of which he was doubtless unaware. 

The tragedy of the Church at Laodicea was, in part, 
the tragedy of an unawareness of spiritual need, a 
blindness unguessed. To her the Lord declared, ‘“ Be- 
cause thou sayest I am rich and have gotten riches, and 
have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou art 
the wretched one and miserable and poor and blind and 
naked, I counsel thee to buy of me gold refined by fire, 
that thou mayest become rich; and white garments that 
thou mayest clothe thyself, and that the shame of thy 


MINOT C. MORGAN 139 


nakedness be not made manifest; and eyesalve to 
anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see.” 

Ah! the pathos of it. Eyes have they but they see 
not. And are they without their counterpart today? 
I suppose those Laodiceans were delightful people 
socially; they were doubtless possessed of the refine- 
ment and culture which is more easily attainable by 
those in affluent circumstances than by those who are 
held down by poverty to irksome and unending toil. 
Many of them may have been possessed of great per- 
sonal charm, which made them delightful companions. 
Paul evidently thought a good deal of them, he sends 
salutations to them in the Colossian Epistle, and urges 
that the people in Colosse get the letter which he wrote 
to Laodicea and read it. He prays for them that they 
may be comforted, that their hearts may be knit to- 
gether in love, that they may know the mystery of 
God, even Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wis- 
dom and knowledge hidden. Lovely people—but lack- 
ing in spiritual vision. And such there are today. 
Young men with as fine a physical equipment as the 
youth at Dothan, and with as great a personal charm as 
the rich young ruler, whom Jesus looked upon and 
loved, but as yet they have not the vision of spiritual 
things, and they know not their own blindness. Many 
are they, of course, of whom this is not true, young men 
whose eyes have been opened, and, while the old men 
are dreaming dreams, they are seeing visions, as the 
ancient prophet Joel had foretold, and as the apostle 
of Pentecost proved. These are they in each succeed- 
ing generation whose vision is of the things unseen and 


140 THE EYES OF A YOUNG MAN 


eternal and whose obedience to their heavenly vision 
transforms them and their world. 

But, many are they, alas! whose eyes reveal to them 
only the swords and spears and helmets on Dothan’s 
hills, and who see not nearby the encircling God. 

And who are they, these keen-eyed men who cannot 
see? You will discover them among the rich, who have 
found in wealth, power, position, social standing, lux- 
ury, freedom and everything their heart desires. When 
they say, “‘ What is such a man worth? ” they mean 
‘““ How great are his possessions? ” ‘Their whole life is 
filled with that which has a monetary equivalent, that 
which may be bought at a price. 

Jesus’ comment on the episode of the rich young 
ruler was the sad lament, ‘‘ How hardly shall they that 
have riches enter into the kingdom of God.” Many do, 
of course, but the reason for it that Jesus assigns is this, 
that “ with God all things are possible.” It is He that 
opens eyes blinded by wealth that they may see. 

But you will discover unseeing eyes not only among 
the rich, but among the poor, whose thought is focussed 
upon the struggles for existence, whose life is made up 
of toil and sleep in unending succession with an occa- 
sional hour of dissipation. ‘There is no vision here, 
just dull monotony. 

Many are those, of course, among the ranks of the 
poor, whose very hardships and heartaches have 
brought God near; conscious of their great need, they 
have found great peace through the vision they have 
had of Him who satisfieth the longing soul and filleth 
the hungry soul with good. 


MINOT C. MORGAN 141 


But many are they also, who see Him not, and whose 
eyes tell them only the story of a life that is hard and 
toilsome and cruel and sordid. Oh! the pathos of their 
lot, who, poor in this world’s goods, are blind also to the 
riches of His grace, whose arms are ever circling us 
in love. | 

Still further, among those for whom a prophet’s 
prayer may well be offered that their eyes may be 
opened, are a goodly company of men of business; fine, 
clean-cut, upright, intelligent, energetic, successful: 
men of affairs, they are, but the affairs that fill their 
thoughts are of the great enterprises in which they are 
involved, commercial and industrial. Within these 
spheres they may be men of vision; indeed, they never 
would have succeeded if they were not. But their 
spheres are limited and, great though they be, they are 
not great enough to satisfy the soul of man. Utter 
absorption in them is sure to dwarf the soul, and dull 
the vision of finer things. 

In this group also we rejoice to find a great company 
who refuse to limit life to a business enterprise, who 
discover spiritual values in their daily tasks, and who 
see beyond the obvious things of a material world into 
the reality and the beauty of the world of spiritual life, 
into the Kingdom of God. 

Yes, but what of the others, whose keen business 
sense does not sense the things of the spirit, and whose 
eyes see not life’s higher values? For them, with deep 
affection and with real concern, we pray Elisha’s 
prayer. 

Another group to whom our thought turns naturally 


142 THE EYES OF A YOUNG MAN 


are the young men of our colleges and universities; 
splendid fellows they are, in the full vigor of youth, 
with all its fine enthusiasm. The world of science is 
opening before them, for the first time. It has capti- 
vated them, it fills their mental horizons full. To them 
it is the story of the universe and its explanation. 
Imagination thrills with the tale of its evolution 
through the eons of nebular formation, and then the 
geologic ages of this earth, and then the fascinating 
development from primordial life through countless 
millenniums up to man. 

And so to many a keen young mind evolution, in- 
stead of being as it is, the story of the way God works, 
becomes a substitute for God, and telescope and test- 
tube take the place of faith. Multitudes there are, of 
course, of whom this is not true, who though men of 
science are also men of faith, and because men of sci- 
ence are men of deeper, richer faith. They may state 
their faith in terms unfamiliar to older generations and 
unknown to many an ancient creed. But they see God, 
that is the important thing. Nearer than Dothan’s hills 
and all that fill them, nearer than the noisy enginery 
of industry or commerce, nearer than all the start- 
ling revelations of material science, they see God, the 
personal God, the Father of our spirits. But some 
there are who lack this vision, whose minds are so 
flooded with truths that they have not grasped the 
unity of truth, whose eyes are so enraptured with the 
sight of things that they have failed to see Him, . 
without whom this multitude of things are chaotic 
and irrational. For them, with yearning love, the 


MINOT C. MORGAN 143 


prophet prays, “ Jehovah, open their eyes, that they 
may see.” 

And do you know, there is no more glorious thing 
that the Eternal God can do than just to answer that 
prayer; indeed, in a sense, that constitutes the whole 
story of God’s redemptive love, in the revealing of 
Himself, whom to know is life eternal. 

Here is the meaning of prophecy—God’s revealing 
of Himself through inspired men who spake as they 
were moved by His Spirit. Through their lips and by 
their pens, through their minds and through their 
hearts, God was manifesting Himself to men as a Per- 
son, holy, strong, loving, unfailing, who forgiveth all 
our iniquities, who healeth all our diseases, who re- 
deemeth our life from destruction, who crowneth us 
with loving kindness and tender mercies. 

Here is the meaning of the Incarnation. Saith Jesus, 
‘“‘ He that hath seen me hath seen the Father.” ‘“ I and 
the Father are one.” Ever has He borne the name 
Immanuel, God with us. ‘‘ In him dwelleth all the ful- 
ness of the Godhead bodily.” His word is the word of 
God. His works are the works of God. And we behold 
“ the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the 
face of Jesus Christ.” 

Here is the abiding significance of the Cross. “ God 
so loved the world.” ‘“ Herein is love, not that we loved 
God, but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the 
propitiation for our sins.” 


“In the Cross of Christ I glory, 
Towering o’er the wrecks of time, 
All the light of Sacred Story, 
Gathers round its head sublime.” 


144 THE EYES OF A YOUNG MAN 


Here is the heart of the Gospel, without which we 
cannot adequately know the love of God. Here was 
the living center of Apostolic preaching. And _ here, 
unless we are to preach another Gospel, must be ours. 
“ Christ—Crucified”” . . . ‘‘ Christ the power of God 
and the wisdom of God.” 

Here, also, is the glory of the Resurrection. God’s 
triumph over death and over sin, through Him “ who 
was delivered up for our offenses, and raised again for 
our justification.” It is God, the glorious God, that 
‘‘raised him from the dead and made him to sit at his 
right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and 
authority and power and dominion, and every name 
that is named, Hot only in this world, but also in that 
which is to come.’ 

Here, too, is the purpose of the Holy Spirit aye 
in our hearts, that He may make God known, guiding 
us into the truth, revealing to us our Father’s will and 
inclining our hearts to obey it, as we see it manifest in 
Jesus Christ. 

Thus through all the story of God’s redemptive work 
for men, there runs the increasing purpose to reveal 
Himself to them, to open their eyes that they may see, 
to enlighten their minds that they may know, to warm 
their hearts that they may love with heart and soul and 
strength and mind the Lover of their souls. 

The answer, then, which God gave to Elisha’s prayer 
was not just an exceptional miracle; rather it was the 
characteristic expression of a gracious power, which the 
divine Father is ever eager to give. You and I, then, 
may offer that prayer with entire confidence that God 


MINOT C. MORGAN 145 


will hear and answer. We may offer it for ourselves, 
that we see Him more clearly and know Him more per- 
fectly. We may offer it for others, for those splendid 
young men of this generation who, keen-eyed and alert, 
are some of them unaware of their blindness and others 
of them groping toward the light. To that intercession 
God will graciously respond. He may not do it with 
that suddenness which characterized the opening of the 
young man’s eyes in Dothan, or the blinding of the 
young man’s eyes with the surpassing glory of a 
heavenly vision on the road to Damascus. Ordinarily 
the knowledge of the truth is more gradually acquired, 
though our apprehension of it at certain crises in our 
spiritual experience may thrill our minds with sudden 
bursts of glory. But whether vision comes as in- 
stantly as to Bartimzus, or as gradually as to that 
other blind man who saw ‘men as trees walking,” 
_and later “ saw all things clearly,” it matters not, so 
vision comes. And then within and beneath and 
above this wonderful universe in which we dwell and 
all the fascinating texture of human life is seen that 
spiritual reality, which interprets all and which shall 
endure forever. 

And I like to think that those who by the grace of 
God have beheld this truth centering in Christ and re- 
vealed through Him, are specially commissioned to 
make Him known who said, ‘“‘ Let your light so shine 
before men that they may see, and seeing your good 
works may glorify your Father who is in heaven. For 
this is life eternal that they should know the only true 
God and him whom he hath sent, even Jesus Christ.” 


146 THE EYES OF A YOUNG MAN 


‘“‘ And his servants shall serve him and they shall see 
his face.” 


PRAYER 


O Gracious Father, who hast formed the eye of man for 
vision and the soul of man to know Thyself, wllumine our 
minds we beseech Thee by the light of Thy truth. Help 
us to see Thee in all Thy creation and supremely in Him 
who is the effulgence of Thy glory and the express image 
of Thy person, even Jesus Christ our Lord. Grant that 
we may know the truth and that the truth may make us 
free, free from darkensng error and enslaving sin. Enable 
us we pray to grow in grace and in knowledge of our Lord 
and Saviour Jesus Christ til that day when we shall be like 
Him for we shall see Him as He is. Meantime may it be 
our joy to take our place and do our part in Hts gracious 
service, who would have all men to be saved and come to 
the knowledge of the truth. In Jesus name. Amen. . 


REINHOLD NEIBUHR 


Reinhold Neibuhr was born in Wright City, Missouri, 
thirty-two years ago last June. Elmhurst College and Eden 
Theological Seminary furnished him his earlier training. 
Later on, he studied at Yale Divinity School, and Yale 
University granted him the degree of M.A. ‘Twice has he 
gone to Europe with the Sherwood Eddy parties, giving 
special study to the conditions in France and Germany. 
Apparently his schooling is only well begun; there are few 
keener or more eager minds in the ministry. True to the 
spirit of youth he has broken with tradition. He is never 
satisfied with conditions as he finds them; and is ever 
holding up the shallowness and weakness of modern civil- 
ized life. Nevertheless, one can always find the note of 
noble belief and high faith in his messages, for the word 
he brings is of a new day, a better day, a day different 
from all others in that Christ will be given right of way in 
business, society, and religion. Brilliancy of mind, fervor 
of spirit, and steadfast allegiance to Jesus Christ combine 
to make his sermons and addresses among the most effec- 
tive of the many worthy discourses brought to the people 
of this city. His fellows honored him last year by electing 
him President of the Detroit Pastors’ Union. 


REALISM AND IDEALISM—The tragedy of our 
day ts that those who see with acute penetration the weak- 
nesses of our civilization have little hope for mankind, 
while those who have inherited the tradittonal hope do not 
seem capable of analyzing the sins of our day. Our real- 
ists are too cynical; and our édealists are too sentimental. 
We need prophets who are not afratd to know the worst 
about man, and who will yet maintain their faith in him. 
In other words, we need a religion which does not gloss 
over any ugly facts in human life; but approaches the total 
facts of life from the perspective of spiritual faith. Wsth 
such a religion we can preach repentance without being 
tempted to despair and can be optimists without being 
corrupted with hypocricy.—REINHOLD NEIBUBR. 


A 
TYRANT SERV ANTS 


REINHOLD NEIBUHR, M.A. 
Bethel Evangelical Church 


“The Sabbath was made for man and not man for the 
Sabbath.”—Marxk 2:27. 


Man has a curious weakness for giving such unthink- 
ing devotion to the institutions and governments which 
are meant to serve him that he tempts them to assume 
arbitrary power over him and to conceive their life as 
an end in itself and not as a means to an end. Human 
history is filled with evidences of this curious per- 
versity. Jesus encountered it in the institution of the 
Sabbath. Whatever motives of tabu may first have 
caused primitive man to set aside a holy day and the 
early Semite to keep the Sabbath, religion at its best 
and as the prophets interpreted it, justified the Sabbath 
for its social and human value as a day of rest and 
worship. 

The Sabbath, according to the best Jewish thought, 
was made for man; but so great was the concern of the 
legalist for the keeping of the Sabbath and so great was 
the fear of the people that they might violate its sanc- 
tity that it became hedged about with a hundred and 
one laws calculated to enforce rest and quiet. These 
laws interfered so much with natural, wholesome and 


149 


150 TYRANT SERVANTS 


even necessary activities that to keep the Sabbath be- 
came a burden rather than a boon to man. Jesus, with 
that natural regard for the wholesome and natural and 
instinctive aversion to artificialities which character- 
ized His whole ministry, was in constant conflict with 
the Sabbath legalists. 

At the present moment we are not interested in the 
immediate question of Sabbath observance, except to 
note that our own Puritanism is not always free of the 
sins which Jesus imputed to Sabbath legalists. What 
interests us is the wider tendency in human thought 
and action of which the Sabbath legalism is but a 
symptom and the wider implication of the principle for 
which Jesus contended. Institutions are made for men 
and not men for institutions. Except by constant and 
jealous vigilance it is impossible to restrain the servants 
of mankind from becoming its tyrants. 

The problem of keeping our servants in their proper 
place has been a vexing one throughout the history of 
civilization. Governments which were meant to bless 
human life with the virtues of social order have easily 
become the oppressors of men; religions which should 
have emancipated man from every tyranny elevated 
the priest into positions of irresponsible autocracy; 
mysteries such as those of man’s sex life in which some 
of the best values of human life are enmeshed have 
become the occasion for degradation, as for instance 
in the phallic orgies of primitive religions. Nothing is 
so good and so useful but that it cannot be corrupted 
by excessive veneration. If it has been a problem 
throughout human history to observe a due sense of 


REINHOLD NEIBUHR 151 


proportion in dealing with tools and means of human 
happiness, that problem is more urgent today than ever 
before. Human life is more social than it once was; 
and, therefore, the authorities which are the by- 
products of social order are more potent; life is more 
complex, and the institutions through which we express 
it have therefore become more difficult to control. 

It is a real question in the modern day whether the 
nation has not become as much a foe as a servant of 
human happiness. Democracy emancipated us from 
the caprice of individual tyrants. But it made the 
nation more powerful than it was in the days of per- 
sonal government. Tyrants ceased their wars when 
their exchequers were emptied, but democratic govern- 
ment can levy taxes upon unborn generations and thus 
continue warfare long after a stage of practical in- 
solvency has been reached. Rapid means of communi- 
cation make centralization of authority over vast 
masses of men possible. Thus science and democracy 
co-operate in making government at once more stable 
and more centralized and therefore more potent for 
good and for evil. If we cannot eliminate international 
anarchy from world civilization, this simply means that 
we have made government more potent for evil. Medi- 
ceval peasants were left practically uncorrupted by 
hatred through the feudal struggles of their day. A 
modern war sows seeds of hatred in the hearts of even 
the children; and our vaunted science gives us the 
weapons to transmute this hatred into effective and 
wholesale murder. 

Nationalism is not of itself an evil thing. It is not 


152 TYRANT SERVANTS 


evil that men should organize their social life. It is 
natural and inevitable. But if one unit of this social 
life, the nation, sets itself up as final and absolute be- 
cause it happens to be larger than the others, though 
not large enough to include the whole human family, 
then the nation becomes a peril to human happiness. 
It is such a peril today. It demands the sacrifice of 
human and personal values, and makes claims upon 
lives of eternal significance for ends that have no. 
eternal value. Trade routes and spheres of influence, 
markets and sources of raw material, instinctive hat- 
reds and instinctive fears, imperial ambitions and eco- 
nomic greed, these are the secular motives and the 
secular aims for which human life is degraded. 
Nothing can defeat the arrant secularism of our present 
international order (or it would be better to say our 
international anarchy) than an appreciation of human 
beings as divinely and eternally significant souls. 

Nations were made for men and not men for nations. 
If we could see human beings from the perspective of 
Jesus we would not hold them in contempt nor in fear, 
and we would soon bring the nationalism which de- 
grades and corrupts their life under the dominion of 
the soul. 

These big cities in which we live and of which we are 
so inordinately proud should be regarded with more 
suspicion and less veneration by the men whose ser- 
vants they are expected to be. We are as foolishly 
proud of the size of our cities as of the strength of our 
nations. What difference does it make whether the 
city in which I live has a hundred thousand or a mil- 


REINHOLD NEIBUHR 153 


lion inhabitants? It means overcrowded schools, un- 
assimilated populations, profiteering in real estate, 
pitifully small apartments and imperiled family life 
and all the other evils which attend the overcrowded 
metropolis. How puerile we are in our vanity over our 
cities. We recount the story of their rapid growth to 
every passing stranger. 

But we forget that we never built them for men. We 
build the factories first and the men stream in from the 
farms and from across the seas to seek work there. 
Providing these men with homes and comforts and 
cultural advantages is an afterthought with most of us. 
We make it as difficult, in fact, as we know how for 
these newcomers to gain a foothold in our city. If we 
have a shrewd suspicion that the city will grow in a cer- 
tain direction we make haste to buy real estate there 
so that we may sell it to the newcomer at a profit. The 
ethical implications of this practice seem to escape us 
entirely. 

I am not competent to weigh the virtues of rural with 
those of urban life, but I am convinced that the imper- 
sonal relationships of a city are not conducive to the 
highest morality. Most of us are what we are because 
of a certain amount of social pressure and social in- 
fluence. If the individual is completely detached from 
his social group and lives an isolated life, as he fre- 
quently does in the metropolis, it is not easy to main- 
tain the highest form of virtue. No man can estimate 
the number of moral tragedies which the loneliness of 
a big city occasions. We are, of course, not totally 
blind to this problem of the city, and we try in church 


154 TYRANT SERVANTS 


and lodge and club to personalize the relationships of 
the city. But our efforts are hardly diligent and far- 
reaching enough to accomplish the purpose. There are 
social thinkers who think that the large city is hopeless 
and that the only hope for an industrial civilization is 
to decentralize industry and destroy the metropolis. 
Perhaps they are right. Whether they are or not, our 
immediate problem is to do more than we have done to 
make the city a servant of men. If we have a sincerely 
spiritual interest in men, we must insist with greater 
passion and more effective social action that cities were 
made for men and not men for cities. 

Industry is another of these dangerously ambitious 
servants of man which is constantly setting up its own 
life as an end in itself. Ideally the modern machine 
with its multiplied productivity should be a blessing to 
man. It should provide him with more comforts and 
more leisure. To a certain extent it has done that. 

The eight-hour day is the fruit not of legislation, but 
of labor-saving mechinery. Our comforts have cer- 
tainly been increased tremendously by machine indus- 
try. But no one seems concerned to note the price we 
have paid for these blessings. Creative joy has been 
taken out of work by the automatic machine. ‘The 
cultural advantages which were inherent in many forms 
of toil in the hand-craft period have been destroyed. 
The more we have humanized the machine the more 
have we dehumanized the mechanic and given him 
nothing in return but a fairly decent wage and the 
doubtful blessing of an automobile. We have a naive 
delight in making and owning things. It is not easy to 


REINHOLD NEIBUHR 155 


recognize the personality of the worker in a big factory, 
but we have not even tried to do it. Every form of 
industrial democracy is anathema with us because we 
fear that it will retard production. Everything is sacri- 
ficed for efficiency, mechanical efficiency. No indus- 
trialist gives a second’s thought to the inevitable 
tendency of modern industry to destroy the cultural 
advantages of toil and leave the laborer without even a 
desire for a richer and fuller life. If labor does express 
some dissatisfaction with the terms of its employment, 
we set that down as rank ingratitude. We are paying 
good wages, and we do not see what more these in- 
grates want. 

We fail to see that the possession of the things which 
modern industry produces is an unmixed blessing. It 
is nice, to be sure, to have the vacuum cleaners, radios, 
phonographs and automobiles, which are the character- 
istic products of industrial enterprise. But we have 
become the slaves of these things. They are in the sad- 
dle and they ride mankind. We are more comfortable 
than happy. We conduct our business task with fever- 
ish diligence in order that we may have all these things 
in proper abundance; and then we use them to live as 
hectically in our leisure as in our business. And we 
prefer luxurious possessions to necessary ones. How 
many young men are buying automobiles on the part 
payment plan, who ought to be saving up their money 
for a house? That is one reason for the housing short- 
age and the little apartments in which it is quite impos- 
sible to raise a family. 

Modern industry is a problem not only for the pro- 


156 TYRANT SERVANTS 


ducer and the consumer, but for the community as 
such. For industry aggravates national frictions and 
is one of the roots of war. The hungry maw of the 
great machine must be fed, and so we post o’er land 
and ocean for raw materials and do violence to the 
backward peoples who possess the materials which we 
need for our industrial enterprise. Our worry only 
starts with raw materials, for we need markets as well. 
The big machine is constantly producing more than we 
consume, no matter how high we raise our standard of 
living. Consequently we must find world areas into 
which these excess products can be thrown. Thus in- 
evitably we find industry behind every kind of im- 
perialism. What a vicious circle we are in. We sacri- 
fice personality for the production of things; we 
sacrifice serenity and quiet in the use of the things 
made at so great a price; and then we imperil peace 
with our brothers as we try to impose our things upon 
the less-favored portion of mankind. Surely it is time 
to say with force that industry was made for man and 
not man for industry. 

Of course, it is easier to say that than to reorganize 
industry in terms of its principle. The fact is that our 
industrialism and our nationalism and our urbanism 
are all intermeshed so that the real question for modern 
man to solve is whether he wants civilization to be for 
man or man for civilization. Our conquest of nature 
and the resulting wealth, our rapid means of communi- 
cation and the resulting centralization of authority 
within nations and increased intimacy of contact be- 
tween nations, our great industrial units and the re- 


REINHOLD NEIBUHR 157 


sulting inequality of privilege and power, all these 
characteristics of our modern life have made civiliza- 
tion a very dubious blessing. We are comfortable, but 
we are not happy; we are living hectic but not abund- 
ant lives; we have leisure, but no capacity to enjoy it; 
we have a world neighborhood, but no world brother- 
hood. We shall probably secure none of the things we 
really need until we regard our whole modern life with 
less naive delight. We are too uncritical about it. We 
have permitted civilization to become our master 
through the same weakness which raised servants to 
tyrants in other days. To make civilization again the 
servant of man will require a penetrating insight on the 
one hand and a robust faith on the other. The people 
who really believe in human values, and who hold to a 
transcendent conception of the soul must be more so- 
phisticated in dealing with the enemies of the soul; and 
the people who know modern civilization and have dis- 
cerned its general tendencies with acute penetration 
need more faith in men. The soul has no victorious 
champion because its friends do not understand its 
enemies; and those who understand its enemies do not 
believe in the soul. 

Logically, religion should be the final champion of 
personality. For it is only a world view which is 
grounded in religious faith that can properly appreci- 
ate the precious mite of personality which man must 
defend against impersonal nature, and again against 
an impersonal nature that it has not learned the art or 
acquired the interest to champion the soul against the 
oppressions of civilization. That is why so many 


158 TYRANT SERVANTS 


humble folks. who suffer most from the weaknesses of 
modern civilization are disavowing religion. That is 
why labor is growing cynical throughout the world. 
Nothing will convert it from that cynicism but a re- 
ligion which can prove itself socially and morally 
effective, which can bring our economic and interna- 
tional life under the dominion of the interests of 
the soul. 

We need people with such a consistently spiritual ap- 
preciation of human life that they will instinctively 
oppose every social custom and every political institu- 
tion which dwarfs and degrades men. If the factory 
robs men of personal values it must be changed until 
it builds character and creates happiness. If the city 
imperils virtue it may have to be destroyed, providing 
it cannot be reformed. If the nation outrages the 
diviner qualities of human life and sacrifices eternal 
values for petty ends, it must be reformed until it 
becomes a true servant of human personality. 

To accomplish these herculean tasks we need a very 
robust faith. Only a strong faith in men as children 
of God, rooted in a spiritual conception of the universe, 
will prompt men to champion the cause of the soul 
against the world. But this faith must be as discern- 
ing as it is robust. The enemies of the soul all profess 
friendship for it, so that naivete in the champions of 
the soul becomes a besetting sin. It is not easy to 
penetrate through the conscious and unconscious hy- 
pocrisies of modern civilization. Only the force of a 
robust faith and the keenness of a trained intellect will 
do it. If we can maintain our faith and put in its 


REINHOLD NEIBUHR | 159 


service the best social intelligence, we will be able, in 
time, to refashion our civilization into something akin 
to the Kingdom of God. If we fail in either spiritual 
passion or moral intelligence, our vaunted civilization 
will become a huge Moloch which will devour our 
children. Let us look through the eyes of Jesus with 
His cool discernment upon all our social customs and 
traditions, upon all our economic practices and indus- 
trial methods, upon our great communities of race and 
class and ask: Are these man’s servants or his 
oppressors? 


lie Iaee 


Our God and Father of us all, we pray Thee that we 
may come to know the worth of man, and that we may 
come to understand that the mission of Jesus was to bring 
to man a way of life which is above the physical. Teach 
us the true dignity of man. Help us to find the joy there 
1s in gsving to our lives the wmportance which Thy Son has 
ascribed to them. Help us to find the joy which follows 
a definite will and program to bring abundant living to the 
world where we ltve. Grant that the Christ may find in us 
willing workers, ready to take determimed stand against 
every power of tradition and. present tendency which 
would narrow the vision and beat back the progress and 
the larger life of men. We ask in His name. Amen, 


nie 


FEE TES 
Pap te WAT aT ht 
Bye huh vee ANA 


‘ 





ARTHUR LEE ODELL 


Dr. Odell was born on a farm in Missouri, and has 
spent most of his life so far in the Southwest. He was 
graduated from the Missouri Valley College in 1904 and 
from Union Theological Seminary in 1907, having been 
ordained in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1905. 
His later pastorates before coming to Detroit were at 
Kingshighway Presbyterian Church, St. Louis, Missouri, 
and the First Presbyterian Church, Phoenix, Arizona. 
For a short period he was President of the Henry Ken- 
dall College, Tulsa, Oklahoma. In every situation he 
made a splendid record for himself and the Kingdom of 
Christ. Since 1922 he has been minister at the West- 
minster Presbyterian Church, where he is accomplishing 
a highly successful community service in one of the fine 
residential districts of Detroit. However, it is as preacher 
of the gospel of Jesus that Dr. Odell excels, as one very 
prominent layman has said about him, “ Never failing to 
preach a compelling message, which sends the congrega- 
tion home dreaming of the day of Righteousness and of 
their own part in that great day.” This sermon is char- 
acteristic of the writer—unadorned, direct, emphatic, 
thoughtful and challenging. It is certainly worth our 
while to pause and enquire concerning our faithfulness 
to the high privilege of keeping the prophet alive—the 
prophet in our own hearts and the prophet in other lives. 


STANDING IN HIS PLACE—To know the peace of 
Christ's pardoning grace “that passeth understanding”: 
to hear God calling us to go for Him; to accept humbly 
and in fatth the responsibility of being set apart to the 
Gospel ministry; to see men, women and helpless children 
suffering from sin, lost to guidance, usefulness, the fellow- 
ship of God, and yet to have compassion on them; to stand 
as a messenger of the Savior, trymg to live righteously 
while seeking to proclaim the “unsearchable riches of 
Christ; to pay the full price of such a ministry in cease- 
less toil and sacrifice that salvation may be for all and 
that peace and goodwill may come upon the earth; that, 
to me, 1s to stand in Hts place. How strange and won- 
derful that any of us should so be called of God. 

—ARTHUR LEE ODELL,. 


XI 
KEEPING THE PROPHET ALIVE 


ARTHUR LEE ODELL, D.D: 


Westminster Presbyterian Church 


“And Elijah said, Fear not,—make me therefore a little cake 
first."—I Kines 17:13. 


This may seem like a pitiless and selfish request. It 
is a man speaking. He is in good health, has no fam-. 
ily, can wring his living from the mountains under 
normal conditions. It is a poor despairing widow to 
whom he speaks. She is gathering sticks to cook a last 
meal for herself and her son before they lie down to die 
of hunger, for a famine is upon the land. 

- But the name of the man is Elijah, and that gives a 
more sympathetic mood to our thoughts. He is a 
prophet of the Lord. The famine has touched him, too, 
and God has sent him to be fed by the woman and her 
son for a season. It was a hard time to live. There 
was much anxiety because scarcity of food and water 
threatened all with starvation. They were also serious 
days for Israel on account of political and religious 
conditions in the kingdom. Ahab was king. His wife, 
Jezebel, of foreign blood and religion, was a real ruler 
behind the throne. She was seeking to supplant the 
worship of Jehovah with idolatry. Obadiah was a kind 
of prime minister under Ahab. He trusted Jehovah 


163 


164 KEEPING THE PROPHET ALIVE 


and took deep, though secret, interest in the prophets 
of the Lord who were trying to preserve for the Jews 
their own religion. 

On one side were Jezebel and her priests of Baal, and 
with them lay the advantage of political power through 
being closely associated with the weak king, Ahab. On 
the other side were the deeply religious Jews, the proph- 
ets, among whom Elijah was the outstanding figure, and 
with them was the advantage of having God as a helper. 
The contest for supremacy was intense, bitter at times. 
Driving idolatry from among the Jews was like doing 
away with the liquor traffic in our own country. 

These were weighty days. The whole religious 
future of the Jews, in fact the ultimate spring of 
Christianity, so far as human powers go, depended 
upon the final issue of this contest, and God’s chief 
agencies, through which to send victory for spiritual 
religion, were the prophets of the day. Destroy them 
and Baalism could reign supreme until it should die 
down of its own infections. 

It was most important, then, that Elijah be kept 
alive by the widow at all costs to herself and her son. 
If the prophet were kept, she would be helping to save 
her people from idolatry to the worship of the one true 
God. If the prophet were destroyed all was lost for 
herself and her people. 

Why was this so? Because of what the prophet 
stood for among the people as the religious leader of 
his time, according to the information given us over 
and over by those who have been our teachers. Let us 
review their instructions. 


ARTHUR LEE ODELL 165 


He was the representative of God to them. He was 
God’s messenger, spokesman. Through him God’s will 
concerning the children of earth was made clear. His 
soul was alert and sensitive to God’s spirit, becoming 
aware of the voice of the Almighty speaking to men, 
and through him as a mouthpiece God spoke to Israel. 
Losing the prophet, then, would have been a hushing 
of God’s voice among them. 

The prophet was a champion of righteousness. As 
represented by Elijah he was courageous, uncompro- 
mising with self or others; lofty, lonely, and persistent 
in his efforts to keep the righteousness of God active in 
human affairs. Centuries ahead of his time in his 
thoughts, hopes and ideals, he was a mighty lift to his 
age, keeping a constant strain and tension of upward 
pull on the affairs of individuals and of state. 

He was the antagonist of evil. He gave and claimed 
no quarters in his battle against wickedness. Nothing 
bad seemed to escape his searching vision, and his 
frank denunciation sometimes staggered sin in high 
places. His sensitive soul never became dulled by the 
deadening powers of ever-present corruption in poli- 
tics and religion. Even his fervor in waging this war 
seemed to suffer few drops in temperature. There was 
no respect of persons in his attack upon wickedness; 
even the king had to meet the burning words of his 
condemnation. His warfare rose to the grandeur of 
the battle of the giants as when he met the priests 
of Baal on Mount Carmel. The tragic was always 
interwoven with his challenges, his contests. It was 
a life-and-death struggle between right and wrong. 


166 KEEPING THE PROPHET ALIVE 


One side must lose disastrously, the other must 
finally win gloriously. What a champion of good, 
what a foe to evil was he! Such is every true 
prophet of God. 

The prophet was the hope of his time. Unless he 
could be heard and obeyed all would be lost. Idolatry 
and its attending wickedness would win the day. Then 
would come the decline and death of those moral values 
and religious truth which had been gathered through 
the centuries by the Jews. In saving Elijah the widow 
helped to save religion for the Jews and finally for the 
world. So is religion, that greatest boon of the race, 
ever dependent upon the prophet for its life. Thus 
does God choose to keep the prophet among us. It is 
His way of ever keeping His messages ringing in our 
ears. There have been times when great prophets 
were almost numerous, and there have been times when 
they seemed few or quite silent among their gener- 
ation. But always God has kept more prophets alive 
than any one soul knew; so has religion lived on and 
advanced in purity of type and power of influence. 

Nor shall we believe for a moment that the prophets 
are absent from our own day. ‘They are to be found 
among men, strong and faithful for righteousness. 
Some are business men, educators, leaders in moral and 
social reform, ministers of the gospel and statesmen. 
Are there not to be found in every great profession of 
our day some who have a keen sensitiveness to God’s 
will, who are heroic champions of right against wrong, 
on whom we depend for keeping alive the sense of 
God’s presence among us and of our right relationship 


ARTHUR LEE ODELL 167 


to Him? They are the mighty pillars bearing the tem- 
ple of civilization in these days of reconstruction. 

Is not the prophet to be found among the next gener- 
ation already rising to succeed us? It is so easy, ap- 
parently, to think he is not among the young. Yet we 
must believe God and know that He will not leave any 
age totally without these high spirits of guidance. 
Surely we cannot live sympathetically near to the youth 
of our time without soon becoming convinced that 
among them are the prospective prophets. God keeps 
sending into our homes those children who are to bear 
the cross of being the preachers of righteousness and 
leaders in all normal lines of professional and business 
life. How often one sees in the home the one child so 
gifted with a spiritual sense and so sensitive to high 
ideals as to make him or her stand out distinctly from 
the brothers and sisters in the home! Upon these in a 
peculiar way God has set His seal to separate them 
unto the peculiar work of a prophet among His people. 
Among the youth in our colleges and universities there 
are found those who are much more aware of spiritual 
and moral truths than are others, and their souls are 
already aflame with the zeal of their God which shall 
send them enthusiastically into their tasks as Elijah 
and John the Baptist went to their work in their own 
day. If we shall only listen to the quiet voice of God 
speaking to us in the calm certainty of the circum- 
stances we shall surely learn that God has more than 
seven thousand prophets, young and old among us, who 
have not bowed the knee to Baal. In fact, instead of 
having settled upon us the discouraging gloom and chill » 


168 KEEPING THE PROPHET ALIVE 


of a coming night of godlessness, we should be able to 
understand that God’s Kingdom keeps coming on earth 
like an everlasting dawn, as the growing light of the 
righteous ‘‘that shineth more and more unto the 
perfect day.” 

Shall we bring the search for the prophet and his 
blessings a little nearer home? Let us look into our 
own hearts, to see if we are one of the prophets among 
men, to see if the prophet born of God within us is 
still alive and active. Did not each of us start with a 
prophet in our being? He should still be the com- 
manding figure within unless we have allowed him to 
starve or be beheaded by some idolatrous Jezebel who 
has gained the throne of our hearts. Yes, verily, there 
is the prophet within us; that part of our nature that 
loves right and hates evil; that trusts God and dares to 
accept the challenge of faith in the Christ. This 
prophet within at times comes upon us suddenly, like 
a fearless and stirred Elijah, to reprove us for some 
evil deed, to warn us against some contemplated action, 
to challenge us to a test of some low-browed plan. We 
sometimes dread to meet him, as Ahab dreaded to meet 
Elijah. Yet, deep in our souls, we know he is essential 
to our final victory over evil. He is the helpful better 
self, the man of iron within us for courage, nobility 
and sacrifice. What should we do in times of uncer- 
tainty and barren necessity, if there were not an Elijah 
in the upper room of our being? 

And how fare these prophets among us and within 
us today? Where are they? What are the circum- 
stances of their existence? What is our attitude toward 


ARTHUR LEE ODELL 169 


them? Are they cheerful and active as on Carmel’s 
heights or do they languish in hopeless despair beside 
the failing stream of our religious zeal? Are they 
given the first fruits of all our attention and efforts; 
are we, in keeping them alive, truly seeking first the 
Kingdom of God and His righteousness, or are they 
dying around us and within us through our selfishness 
and neglect? Do we bake for them a cake first? 
Alas! prophets do die, we know, though they have 
survived hard lots. The people have not always been 
appreciative of them or kind to them. They have 
“had trial of mockings and scourgings, yea moreover 
of bonds and imprisonments—being destitute, afflicted, 
ill-treated.””, They have been stoned. How much 
poorer mankind is today because so many prophets 
were not received, yea, were even put to death by those 
to whom they were sent. Like our Christ, their own 
received them not. Yes, prophets die. Elijah, Elisha, 
Amos, Hosea, Jeremiah, Isaiah, John the Baptist all 
ceased from one cause or another to deliver their 
mighty notes of warning, to speak forth their words of 
condemnation or to sing their songs of hope in God. 
New voices had to break silence. And prophets die 
today. They die of old age, because of overwork, 
weary and sore wounded, early in the battle. They 
die because of neglect, of harsh treatment and misun- 
derstandings on the part of those who should have been 
their friends. It is so easy for us to destroy the young 
prophet, to make light of his sentiments, to call him a 
dreamer, to smile at his high aims for men in whom we 
have lost at least part of our confidence, to smother 


170 KEEPING THE PROPHET ALIVE 


down the fiery zeal of youth which should have been 
fanned into intenser light and heat. Alas, too, the 
prophet may die in your soul and mine because of 
neglect and the abuse given by the base qualities of 
our lower selves. How many of us have let fade from 
our inner visions the high ideals of right, of worship, 
and of love! 

Indeed, we may even discover that we are not deeply 
troubled because the prophet is no longer alive within 
us. The day may come when we shall hunt the waste 
places of our souls to find our forsaken Elijah that he 
may call down showers of refreshing salvation upon 
our sin-parched and barren hearts. Surely the day 
will come when we shall realize that in losing our 
prophets we have lost all, and only by finding him and 
restoring him to his rightful place through Christ’s 
pardon and love shall we be able at last to save any- 
thing at all. If, then, we can keep the prophet alive 
within us we can be saved; if we can keep enough 
prophets alive in our country we can save America; if 
the Church can send out enough prophets unto all 
peoples, she can bring salvation unto all the world 
through Christ, who has promised to be with them unto 
the uttermost. 

Join with me, then, my friends, in the noble resolve 
suggested by this text. Let it be with us, that no 
sacrifice shall be counted too great for us to make in 
order to keep alive in our day those great souls of 
spiritual vision and courage, especially those found 
among the youth of our homes and communities. Let 
us give sympathy, co-operation and guidance to them 


ARTHUR LEE ODELL 171 


like Elijah giving to Elisha, like Eli nurturing young 
Samuel into his God-given work. With them we will 
gladly share our last morsel of time, energy, or spiritual 
knowledge that they may have their day of power and 
deliverance. We shall need to read, study, pray, wor- 
ship, and work to crush the Ahabs and Jezebels out of 
our souls, to stand true to every good work, to make 
sacrifices, to keep alive the prophets within us. 

That we are resolved to do, for, in the end, we be- 
lieve the barrel of meal will waste not, since He to 
whom the prophets of old looked as one who was to 
come, calls unto every prophet among us today, giving 
unto us His great commission, ‘‘ Go ye therefore, and 
make disciples of all nations, and lo, I am with you 
always even unto the end of the world.” Shall we at 
the last be found among the prophets? Shall we be 
able to keep the prophet alive? ‘‘ And Elijah said, 
Fear not—make me thereof a little cake first.” 


PRAYER 


O God, our Father, send Thy Spirit into our hearts this 
hour to feed the prophet within us, giving him new life 
and settmg him upon his feet to lead our way henceforth 
out of the woes of sin into the joys of Thy salvation, 
through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen. 


a a 
ra YA | 
i ti 
ve 
Ne 


K fn i 
an Wl 


i 
‘af 


) i } i 
vit 





AUGUSTUS P. RECCORD 


Dr. Reccord is a graduate of Brown University and 
Harvard Divinity School. Subsequently he held pastor- 
ates in Chelsea, Cambridge and Springfield, Mass., and in 
Newport, R. I. Before coming to Detroit he was minister 
of the Church of the Unity, Springfield, for fourteen 
years. In that city he was especially active in community 
interests, being called upon repeatedly to take prominent 
part in charter revisions, the housing commission, and 
many other civic affairs of exceeding importance. For 
the past six years Dr. Reccord has been the minister at 
the First Unitarian Church in Detroit, attracting large 
attention in the city. In recognition of the conspicuous 
results of his ministry in New England and Michigan, the 
honorary degree of Doctor of Divinity was conferred 
upon him by Brown University. It ought to be said that, 
out of a remarkable versatility, he places his greatest em- 
phasis upon social and religious themes. A brilliant mind, 
a most careful diction, a brotherly spirit and a deep 
loyalty to the truth in God, as he understands it, contrive 
to give him a worthy place in the front rank of our preach- 
ers. One surely finds in this sermon the evidence of a 
truly great preaching ministry in this age of skepticism 
and doubt. 


OUR TASK—The challenge of today to the ministry 
of religion is that we give to spiritual realities the place 
and importance which they deserve. Too long they have 
been made to take second rank. The task of the church 
ts to mterpret the age to itself. Material progress and 
intellectual attainment become a menace to cwwilization 
unless accompanted by a corresponding growth in moral 
principle and spiritual power. Then upon the foundation 
of material prosperity and intellectual achtevement which 
the toil and industry and self-sacrifice of men have laid, 
the toil and industry and self-sacrifice of other men will 
butld a more stately mansion, builded of the things of the 
spirit and in which God will be all-in-all. ; 

—Avucustus P. REccorp. 


ALT 
LIVING THE IMMORTAL LIFE 


AUGUSTUS P. RECCORD,; D.D. 
First Unitarian Church 


“This do and thou shalt live.’—Luxs 10: 28. 


In the passage from which this text is taken, report- 
ing a conversation between a certain young lawyer and 
Jesus, we have represented two distinct attitudes 
toward the life immortal. One represents the average 
man, “‘ the man on the street ”’; the other, the religious 
teacher. One was thinking of duration; the other of 
quality. One had found life so good, so abounding in 
creature comforts and worldly satisfactions, that he 
yearned to have it prolonged forever. The other’s chief 
concern was to so live as to make life worthy of being 
prolonged forever. Then one can trust God to provide 
the means. And so, when the young man came to 
Jesus and asked, ‘‘ What shall I do to inherit eternal 
life? ”, He referred him to the law in which he had been 
brought up and asked what it had to say, not concern- 
ing man’s destiny in another world, but concerning his 
duty in this. When He received the expected reply, 
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with heart and soul 
and mind and strength, and thy neighbor as thyself,’ 
His answer was immediate and conclusive. ‘ This do 
and thou shalt live.” Not live forever, but live. In 


175 


176 LIVING THE IMMORTAL LIFE 


other words, he who so lives is made aware that the 
life that he is living is eternal. As Lyman Abbott once 
said, ‘“I had rather be mortal and have a right to 
immortality than be immortal and not be worthy of 
immortality.” 

Not long ago I was talking with a friend about the 
apparent indifference to the Church and to organized 
religion displayed by otherwise respectable and highly 
respected men. I had broached the subject deliberately 
because I knew that he was not a regular church at- 
tendant and was associated with a group of men of 
similar habit. He declared that their attitude was due 
to no opposition to organized religion or lack of sym- 
pathy with religious ideals, but to lack of faith in the 
Church as the interpreter of those ideals. ‘“ Do you 
know,” he said, “that the average man on the street 
is without any compelling faith in God or in Christ 
or in the future life? ”’ Further conversation revealed 
that he had convinced himself that God is a creation 
of the pious imagination, that Jesus was a self-deluded 
Galilean peasant, that this life is all in all. Three score 
years and ten, more or less, and then the end. | 

I find it difficult to believe that this represents the 
attitude of all or even a majority of those who are in- 
different to the Church. And yet the existence in any 
community of even a considerable number of men and 
women who entertain such opinions concerning the 
fundamental teachings of the Christian religion consti- 
tutes a challenge which we cannot ignore. Even if 
there was no God, no Christ, no future life,—grant 
that the Church has been mistaken at all these points, 


AUGUSTUS P. RECCORD 77 


civilization cannot afford to repudiate the ideals of life 
and conduct for which the Church has stood. And if 
it has not been mistaken, if it has glimpsed great 
truths which one day will receive more adequate ex- 
pression, civilization cannot afford to become indiffer- 
ent to the one institution which has dedicated itself 
unreservedly to the establishment and promulgation 
of these truths. 


“ Christ,’ some one says, “ was human as we are; 
No judge eyes us from heaven, our sins to scan: 
We live no more when we have done our span.” 
“Well then, for Christ,’ thou answerest, “Who 

can care?” 
So answerest thou; but why not rather say: 
“ Hath man no second life? Pitch this one high! 
Sits there in heaven no judge, our sin to see? 
More strictly then, the inward judge obey! 
Was Christ a man like us? Ah, let us try 
If we, then, too, can be such men as He.” 


This is the only valid conclusion if the man on the 
street is right. It is the conclusion to which we are 
driven irresistibly by the logic of human experience. 
If there is no other life, then this life must be pitched 
at its highest if it is to be worth while. Faith in God 
gives to virtue an added incentive, but the virtuous life 
is of intrinsic worth, irrespective of this faith. Loy- 
alty to Jesus makes it easier to live the good life, but 
the good life is rendered no less imperative by the ab- 
sence of that loyalty. Belief in another life helps to 
reconcile us to the disappointments and failures of this, 
but the lack of such faith affords no sanction for living 
this life upon anything but the highest level. Even if 


178 LIVING THE IMMORTAL LIFE 


God is a fiction, Christ a delusion, the future life a 
dream, we cannot dispute Browning’s verdict. 


“It’s wiser being good than bad; 
It’s safer being meek than fierce; 
It’s fitter being sane than mad.” 


But what if the man on the street is not right? What 
if the Church, in its age-long quest for truth, has not 
been following a will-’o-the-wisp, but has been drawing 
ever nearer to the eternal verities? Must we not then 
accept the poet’s conclusion? 


“My hope ts, a sun will pierce 
The thickest cloud earth ever stretched; 
That after last returns the first, 
Though a wide compass round be fetched; 
That what began best, can’t end worst, 
Nor what God blessed once, prove accursed.” 


The reply which Jesus gave to the young lawyer’s 
question is in accord with this conclusion. ‘‘ This do 
and thou shalt live.” If we might venture a paraphrase: 
we could say: ‘“‘ Waste no time in vain conjectures and 
idle speculations concerning the life to come. Live the 
life that now is in such a way that an eternity of it will 
be worth while. Then you may be assured that an 
eternity will be given.” 

The pages of the gospel confirm this truth. The 
disciples did not believe in immortality because of the 
resurrection of Jesus. They believed in His resurrec- 
tion because of their consciousness of the eternal char- 
acter of His life. They saw in Him a quality of life 
over which death could have no power. A life of such 


AUGUSTUS P. RECCORD 179 


transcendent worth vindicated its right to endure. Is 
there anything in your life or mine which is capable 
of creating this same impression? Are we building in 
accordance with a life plan which will require more 
than three score years and ten for its complete real- 
ization? Does it justify us in demanding an eternity 
of existence? Or if our demand were denied, could we 
accuse the world of injustice? It often seems that 
those who clamor most for another life have failed to 
make the best of this, while those whose lives manifest 
most of this eternal quality are least concerned about 
what will happen to them when “ life’s fitful dream ” 
is o’er. The life immortal does not need to be argued. 
Assume it and it will prove itself. 

This truth needs to be emphasized repeatedly in the 
face of the world’s skepticism and unbelief. ‘There 
was never a time when there was such a persistent 
demand for some inescapable evidence of the immortal- 
ity of the soul. This is one of the results of the Great 
War. The multitude of our dead, their extreme youth, 
the tragic nature of their going, compelled us to alter 
our attitude toward death. Whatever we may think of 
others, we refused to think of these as dead. They are 
alive forevermore. ‘The result was an increased desire 
to penetrate the veil of mystery which had always 
shrouded this familiar experience. We welcomed evi- 
dence of survival from whatever source, and experi- 
enced a new interest in the supernatural and the occult. 
As one said: ‘We demanded enough knowledge of 
dying to enable us to go on living.” And yet there was 
never a time when there were so many considerations 


180 LIVING THE IMMORTAL LIFE 


which make this belief in the life immortal difficult, if 
not impossible. The relation of mind to matter, of 
body to soul, of thought to the thinking brain, all as 
parts of the same living organism, the insignificance of 
human life on this planet itself when compared with 
that great system of suns and stars of which it is a 
part, the difficulty of conceiving of life apart from the 
body and in some other realm,—such considerations 
have been exploited-for the purpose of undermining 
our faith in the immortality of the soul. And yet that 
faith has risen triumphant over every obstacle and 
vindicated its claim to be the expression of our dearest 
hopes and deepest convictions. 

It is the persistence of this faith which accounts for 
the success of those mysterious and mystical cults 
which appear from time to time in the religious world. 
Christian Science, with its emphasis upon the reality 
of mind and the unreality of matter; Spiritualism, with 
its affirmation of the nearness of those whom we have 
loved and lost; Theosophy, with its exaltation of per- 
sonal communion between the human soul and its God, 
—all these derive their power of appeal from their 
unwavering denial of the materialistic philosophy of 
the man on the street and their insistence upon the 
reality and worth of the unseen world. The fact that 
multitudes of intelligent men and women in every com- 
munity have embraced one or another of these systems 
of thought, admits of but one explanation. They find 
in them, at least for a time, the satisfaction of that 
spiritual craving which is one of the primary instincts 
of the race and which refuses to be content with any 


AUGUSTUS P. RECCORD 181 


philosophy of life which does not rest upon the affirma- 
tion that man is primarily spiritual and therefore 
eternal. Unfortunately, they have often felt con- 
strained to go outside of the churches into which they 
were born and the religion which has been theirs from 
childhood in order to gain possession of a truth which 
lies close to the heart of all genuine religion. And 
therein lies the warning. Unless our churches place 
less emphasis upon dogma and more emphasis upon 
this one great cardinal truth of the reality of the spiri- 
tual life, such cults will continue to find willing adher- 
ents among an eager and credulous humanity. 

How is this emphasis to be laid? Not by argument 
and special pleading. Faith in the reality of the spiri- 
tual life is a matter of experience rather than of demon- 
stration. Jesus did not attempt to prove that the soul 
is immortal. He assumed it and found that experi- 
ence justified the assumption. No other hypothesis 
explained so many of the facts of life or explained them 
so adequately. He constructed His working theory 
upon the assumption that life is eternal, and all of its 
discordant facts slipped into place and ceased to vex 
Him. The Christian world has not yet discovered or 
devised a better method. The traditional “ proofs ” 
of immortality fail to prove. They are based upon 
the assumption that the soul is an original entity and 
therefore imperishable and indestructible. But what 
of the survival of personality, without which immor- 
tality would be equivalent to extinction? Today we 
draw our inferences from the quality of the soul’s life 
as evidenced by the experience of the race,—from the 


182 LIVING THE IMMORTAL LIFE 


instinctive yearning which is characteristic of every 
age and race and must point to a corresponding real- 
ity; from the human reason which demands an eternity 
for its complete expression; from the moral life which 
demands an eternity for its fruition, and from the moral 
law which demands an eternity for its vindication. 

Thus immortality is essential to life’s completeness. 
The dominant characteristic of our life on earth is its 
insufficiency. Human achievement, at its best, is frag- 
mentary. The longest earthly life permits the realiza- 
tion of only a fraction of our hopes and dreams. To 
deny it any other opportunity for self-expression would 
be to rob it of its full significance. We are painfully 
conscious of the disparity between capacity and 
achievement, virtue and happiness, wickedness and 
misery. 

How can we be reconciled to the blasted hopes, the 
disappointed ambitions, the shattered affections, which 
loom so large when we try to conceive of this life as all 
in all, except upon the assumption that they are a part 
of an infinite whole, an eternity of living, in which the 
broken arcs of this present life come to their perfect 
round? Assume that death ends all, and the world 
becomes unintelligible. Creation ends in an anti- 
climax. In the words of John Fiske, it ‘“ puts man to 
permanent intellectual confusion.”” Assume that death 
is but an incident in a life that is endlessly progressive, 
and it presents no problem. ‘Then immortality be- 
comes synonymous with life, growth, progress, attain- 
ment. It is not a gift but a challenge. To accept life 
upon such terms is a privilege. To make the most and 


AUGUSTUS P. RECCORD 183 


best of it is an obligation. If we accept full responsi- 
bility for the life of today, we may safely trust God for 
the morrow. ‘‘ Whether we live, we live unto the 
Lord; or whether we die, we die unto the Lord; 
whether we live therefore or die, we are the Lord’s.” 

It is this faith which robs death of its sting and 
deprives the grave of its seeming victory. What 
Arnold hoped for and Browning affirmed, Jesus as- 
sumed. And we are His followers. Instead of the 
doubtful refrain, “ If there is no other life, pitch this 
one high,” we exclaim “ Pitch this life high, and its 
eternal character will be revealed.” Dare we ignore 
this challenge? If you would know that God is and 
that He is good, live as though you were living ‘‘ under 
His eye and by His power.” Such a life will vindicate 
itself and also the conviction upon which it is based. 
If you would appreciate the beauty and grandeur of 
the Christ life, follow in His steps,—Live as He would 
have you live, love as He would have you love, serve as 
He would have you serve. 

Such a life is its own justification and its own suf- 
ficient reward. If you would experience the power of 
the endless life, live as though you were to live forever, 
and that power will be disclosed. Live for this day 
only, as though life were simply a matter of what we 
shall eat and what we shall drink and wherewithal we 
shall be clothed, and it will be easy to convince our- 
selves that this life is all in all. We shall agree with 
the man on the street. But live each day, as the philos- 
opher says, “under the aspect of eternity,” with a 
consciousness of its eternal values, and it will demon- 


184 LIVING THE IMMORTAL LIFE 


strate the reality of the faith that springs eternal in the 
human breast. Then all fear of death will be swal- 
lowed up in the consciousness of life. We shall live 
our lives from day to day, knowing that our ultimate 
destiny is in our own hands. “ We are the masters of 
our fate; we are the captains of our souls.” And we 
shall lay ourselves down for our last sleep without fear 
or dread, knowing that, we shall be satisfied when we 
awake in His likeness. 


“In man’s self arise 
August anticipations, symbols, types, 
Of a dim splendor ever on before, 
In that eternal circle life pursues, 
For men begin to pass their natures’ bound 
And find new hopes and cares, which fast supplant 
Their proper joys and griefs; and outgrow all 
The narrow creeds of right and wrong which fade 
Before the unmeasured thirst for good; while peace 
Rises within them ever more and more. 
Such men are even now upon the earth.” 


PAY EIR 


Our Heavenly Father, we would add our voices to that 
great chorus of pratse and adoration which goes up to 
Thee from all created things. We thank Thee for the 
world in which Thou hast placed us and for all that makes 
it beautiful and fair. We thank Thee for the life with 
which Thou hast endowed us and for all that makes tt of 
service to others and a satisfaction to ourselves. We 
thank Thee especially for Him who came to reveal the 
dignity and worth of our common human nature and its 
oneness with the Divine. Make us heirs, with Him, of the 
life wmmortal and give to us the blessed assurance that 
because H'e lives forever, we can never die. In His name 
we ask tt. Amen. 


C. H. RUESSKAMP 


The Rhineland district of Germany is the birthplace of 
Rev. C. H. Ruesskamp. Early in his youth he came to 
America, receiving his primary education in the elementary 
schools of York, Pennsylvania. His collegiate training 
was secured in the colleges and seminary of the Missour1 
Synod of the Lutheran Church, from which he was finally 
graduated in 1892. It was in that year that he was or- 
dained a member of the Synodical Conference of the 
Missouri Synod in the city of York, and was called to 
Little Rock, Arkansas, to take care of the Negro work in 
that state. In 1897 he opened the English work in Buffalo 
and served Calvary Church for fourteen years. For the 
past sixteen years he has served Saint Mark’s Lutheran 
Church in Detroit, which is the representative English 
Lutheran Church of Michigan and one of the outstanding 
churches of its kind in America. Here is a man who 
preaches textual sermons. With no attempt at ornate 
style he preaches to large and appreciative audiences every 
Sunday. To judge this man correctly one must hear him. 
It is safe to say that no man among us carries more spirit 
into his preaching. As one man puts it, “ When you hear 
this man preach, you know that God is speaking through 
him.” Rev. Ruesskamp was one of the outstanding lead- 
ers in relief work among the German charitable institu- 
tions during and directly after the war, and he is active in 
Detroit in social welfare among his people. 


PREACH THE GOSPEL—The command of Christ 
1s to preach the gospel, which is the greatest trea- 
sure God has bestowed on a sin laden world for tts tem- 
poral and eternal welfare. Who would not be willing to 
give up all for it? Justification by grace through faith in 
Christ is a correct exhibition of that gospel. Who would 
not do all for wt? This guiding princsple tolerates no 
error, and enriches man for time and eternity. Who 
would not be willing to bear all things for it? To lead 
men to eternal life at the hand of this unerring guide, 
when eternity will reveal who has chosen the good part— 
this and this alone keeps me in the ministry. Though I 
have had opportuntty to make good money in other call- 
ings, it 1s man’s salvation, the greatest question in time, 
which moves me to hold fast to the dearest spot on earth, 
the pulpit of the church of the living God. 

—C. H. RurssKAMP. 


ALTT 
CHRIST [8S RISEN 


CA HURUESSKAMP 
Saint Mark’s English Lutheran 


“ But now ts Christ risen from the dead.’—I Cor. 15:20. 


‘“O sing unto the Lord a new song; for he hath done 
marvelous things; his right hand and his holy arm hath 
gotten him the victory. The Lord hath made known 
his salvation: his righteousness hath he openly showed 
in the sight of the heathen. He hath remembered his 
mercy and his truth toward the house of Israel: all the 
ends of the earth have seen the salvation of our God.” 

These words will find their echo today in every con- 
gregation. Wherever there are bells to ring, wherever 
there are organs to play unto the Lord, wherever there 
are lips to praise His holy name, and hearts to rejoice 
in Him, there today’s theme will be: “ O sing unto the 
Lord a new song.” 

The hymns we have sung during the past weeks have 
been beautiful. Even the tunes of Lent can touch the 
heart; yea, even under the cross of Christ the soul of 
the believer feels the joys of heaven. Willingly does 
he listen to the cry of Good Friday: ‘ Behold Him 
suffer, bleeding, die.” Readily does he join in the 
mournful songs, ‘‘ O bleeding head, and wounded,” and 
“OQ Lamb of God most holy.” These hymns of sad- 


187 


188 CHRIST IS RISEN 


ness fill the heart of the sinner with greater joy than 
all the songs of mirth. 

But if, in our hymn-books, we could find no Easter 
hymns following the Lenten songs and in our Bibles no 
Easter gospel next to the account of Christ’s sufferings 
and in our churches no Easter festival after the Lenten 
season, our condition would be sad, indeed. Then our 
Lenten service, yea, our entire Christian life, would 
resemble a night without a morning, a heartrending, 
harsh dissonance without a pleasing and final finale. 

Thanks be unto God! This final harmony is being 
heard today in majestic and jubilant strains through- 
out the Church. ‘“O sing unto the Lord a new song” 
is the jubilant cry of Christendom. Angels were the 
first to announce this new song. Apostles carried it 
over the world. For centuries it has been spread and 
handed down from generation to generation, and today 
it is heard in more than one hundred and fifty tongues 
on both hemispheres of the earth. Not only in the 
churches would we sing it with sound of organ and 
trumpet; we would summon all creation to assist in 
swelling this mighty chorus. We would call upon the 
earth to awaken from her winter’s slumbers and join 
in this new song. The little brooks, freed from their 
icy coverings, shall assist us with their murmurings; 
the trees with the whisperings of their new green 
leaves; the birds with their exalting songs, rising up 
toward the heavens; the sea with her waves dashing 
against the distant shore, that even the heathen nations 
may hear it—all these are to join in this new song 
which has renewed the face of the earth and which 


C. H. RUESSKAMP 189 


even today gladdens the heart of sorrowful men and 
fills them with new life. 

‘Christ is risen’ is the new song announced by the 
apostle in today’s text. Let us receive from him our 
great Easter message. 


THE LORD IS RISEN 


1. This message is a faithful saying. 

2. It is worthy of all acceptation. 

This message is true (1) because it bears the blood- 
stained signatures of many witnesses, (2) because on 
it is built the massive structure of the Christian 
Church, and (3) because the heart experiences of all 
true Christians testify of it. 

Christ is risen! He who was.buried on Good Friday 
evening has come forth out of the grave. This message 
is so wonderful that it frightened those women who 
first heard it; honest Thomas in plain words declared, 
‘“‘ Except I see, I shall not believe’; some in the first 
Christian congregation at Corinth stated, ‘‘ There is no 
resurrection from the dead”; and even today it is 
doubted and severely attacked. But can this contra- 
diction disturb our Easter joy? Shall the doubts of a 
melancholy Thomas or the wanton jeers of the Epi- 
cureans cause any discord in the new song which we 
offer this day to our Easter King? God forbid! The 
great Easter message is true—it bears the blood- 
stained seal of many faithful witnesses; and here on 
holy record are found the signatures. 

If the Easter message rested only on the assertion 
of a few weak and nervous women, who in the early 


190 CHRIST IS RISEN 


dawn came running from the open grave, trembling 
from fright, we might doubt the evidence. But it does 
not. Here we have a large number of witnesses. 
Cephas has seen him and declares it before all the 
people on the day of Pentecost. To all of the apostles 
did He appear, and even Thomas submits and makes 
the confession, ‘My Lord and my God.” In like 
manner He is recognized by John at the sea of Tiberias, 
and John cries out, “It is the Lord.” More than five 
hundred brethren saw Him at one time, and finally 
Paul affixed his signature to this remarkable record in 
writing. He says, ‘ And last of all, He was seen of 
me also, as one born out of due time.” 

Are these not sufficient witnesses? Are these not 
trustworthy witnesses? Is it possible that all, includ- 
ing the women, could have been deceived? Was it 
nothing but the phantoms of an excited imagination? 
In the evening at Emmaus, as well as in the morning 
at Joseph’s garden? At the sea of Tiberias, as well as 
in Jerusalem? On the field near Damascus in broad 
daylight, as well as during the quiet night behind closed 
doors? Or, if they were not deceived themselves, did 
they intend to deceive the world? Was the preaching 
of Christ as the Risen One a concerted plan, an in- 
genious, well-studied scheme? ‘ Then,” cries honest 
Paul in hot indignation, ‘“‘ we would be found false 
witnesses of God, because we have testified of God 
that he raised up Christ, whom he raised not up.” 
Dare anyone assert this? Can you believe for a mo- | 
ment that Peter on the day of Pentecost stood before 
that vast crowd and from the steps of the temple lied 


C. H. RUESSKAMP 191 


to the people, ‘‘ Him hath God raised up”? Can you 
believe that Paul stood in the market-place of Athens 
and there, under the open sky of the omnipresent God, 
lied, “ God will judge the world through Christ, whom 
he hath raised from the dead ”? Can you believe that 
John should have lied in his old days, when he sat 
down and began his first epistle with these solemn 
words full of apostolic earnestness and paternal kind- 
ness, “ That which was from the beginning, which we 
have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which 
we have looked upon and which our hands have 
handled of the word of life—that we declare unto 
you”’? If these men have lied, who of all creation 
deserves to be trusted? Then no testimony is true. 

But why should these men lie? No physical benefit 
came to them because of the Easter message. Scorn 
and contempt was Paul’s reward in Athens; and they 
left him, saying, ‘‘ What will this babbler say?” It 
was equally so at Cesarea when Festus exclaimed, 
‘Paul, thou art beside thyself.” Lashings and beat- 
ings were the reward of John and Peter for having 
preached the gospel of the risen One in Jerusalem. 
Chains and fetters the apostles had to suffer. Every 
one practically was cast in prison, and finally cruel 
death was their portion. With but one exception these 
men confirmed their testimony with their own blood. 
Will anyone die for a lie? Will anyone become willing 
to be stoned for a lie as Saint Stephen, beheaded for a 
lie like Saint James, crucified for a lie like Saint Peter? 
Will anyone be willing or able to suffer for a lie like 
Saint Paul? 


192 CHRIST IS RISEN 


Danger upon the water, danger among murderers, 
danger among the Jews, danger among the heathen, 
danger in cities, in deserts, among false brethren, toil 
and labor, hunger and thirst, fasting and watching, cold 
and nakedness, this was the lot of Paul. Could he have 
been able, rejoicing in all these troubles, to lay his 
grey head under the axe of the executioner with the 
blessed assurance, “‘ I have fought a good fight, I have 
finished my course, I-have kept the faith; henceforth 
there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness ”’? 
Could he have lied all along for twenty years in twenty 
different countries? Never, no, never! We believe the 
testimony of these witnesses. It is most assuredly true 
that Christ has risen from the dead, for these witnesses 
have signed this message not in ink, but in their own 
blood. It bears the blood-stained seal of many faithful 
witnesses. 

Upon it rests the building of the entire Church of 
Christ. ‘‘ Moreover, brethren,’ thus writes the apostle 
at the beginning of our epistle, “ I declare unto you the 
gospel, which I preached unto you, and which also ye 
have received, and wherein ye stand. By which also 
ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached 
unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.”’ In other 
words, the writer says that the preaching of Jesus 
Christ as the crucified One is the foundation on which 
the congregation at Corinth rested and stood, and it is 
the foundation on which this present congregation here 
assembled is founded and built. 

Through this Easter message of the crucified and 
risen Saviour the Holy Ghost has called, enlightened, 


C. H. RUESSKAMP 193 


sanctified, and preserved in the true faith the entire 
Christendom upon earth from the beginning to the 
present time. It is not to be imagined that the gospel 
would have found an abiding reception in a single soul 
or that one stone toward the erection of the Church of 
Christ could have been placed in position, if that first 
word, “ Christ is risen,” had been a lie. If you could 
possibly imagine such a thing, could the massive build- 
ing of the Church still stand until this day, enduring 
the storms of nearly two thousand years, if it had been 
builded on a false foundation, builded upon sand, and 
supported by a dozen enthusiasts or impostors? Just 
' look at the massive pillars of our own church building. 
They could not stand upright through the years and 
support those fine arches, if they were not built on a 
good foundation. Otherwise they would have long ago 
crumbled to pieces over our heads. Now, in your 
imagination, behold the grand, invisible building of 
the Church of Christ, whose pillars rest upon the soil 
of five continents, whose walls are vaulting them- 
selves over immense tracts of earth and sea, whose 
domes vanish in the bliss of heaven, and in whose 
nave millions of believers of all nations are assem- 
bled. Do you think that this Church of Christ 
would still stand after two thousand years, in which 
events have occurred which have shaken the very 
foundations of life and wrought incalculable change, 
if her pillars had been placed upon and her wall 
cemented with a lie? Nay, if we would refuse to 
believe it, these very stones would be compelled to 
proclaim it, “‘ Christ is risen.” This is a true saying, 


194 CHRIST IS RISEN 


for upon it rests the massive foundation of the entire 
Church of God. 

And of this also testifies the heartfelt experience of 
all true Christians. “I am the least of the apostles. 
By the grace of God I am what I am; and his grace 
which was bestowed upon me was not bestowed in vain. 
But I labored more abundantly than they all; yet not 
I, but the grace of God which was with me.” With 
this confession full of true, heartfelt humility and of 
noble apostolic consciousness, Paul bears a beautiful 
testimony to the indestructible life of Jesus and to the 
living presence and quickening influence of the risen 
Saviour in the hearts of all His believers. And though 
none of us would dare to compare ourselves, even at a 
distance, with the apostle Paul, either in the dignity of 
the office committed to him, or in the measure of grace 
received by him, or in the depth of Christian experi- 
ence, or in the magnitude of service rendered by him, 
nevertheless every believing Christian may experience 
within himself something of that inner testimony of the 
risen and living Saviour. 

Every honest man rooted in the faith will smile at 
the demand to prove the truth that Christ is risen. A 
simple Christian will say, ‘‘ You need not make any 
words; you need not get excited. Here, within my 
heart, is written much plainer and surer than all the 
preachers could tell me that Jesus lives and that He 
lives within me, also. Jesus is with His own through 
all the days, and He is with me every day. I am sure 
when I pray that He is close to me. I realize His 
assistance when at my work, even as He was with the 


C. H. RUESSKAMP 195 


disciples at the sea when He commanded that they let 
down the nets. I feel His presence when I hear or read 
His word. He speaks, and my heart burns as was the 
case with the two disciples on the journey to Emmaus. 
I feel His presence when I weep. He comes to me and 
says, ‘Why weepest thou?’ as He did with Mary in 
the garden. Yea, I feel it even when I have sinned. 
He reproves me, and, taking me tenderly aside, He asks 
me as He did Peter, ‘ Lovest thou me?’ Christ is 
risen! Christ lives! This I experienced in the hour 
of my conversion, when the new man began to live in 
me. This, by the will of God, I expect to feel when I 
lie down to die; and then I will beg Him as did the 
pilgrims, ‘ Abide with me, dear Lord, for it is toward 
evening and my day is far spent.’ Then with Saint 
Stephen I shall see the heavens opened and will ex- 
claim, ‘ Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.’ ” 

Yes, Christ is risen. It is not a dead Saviour to 
whom you pray, but a personal, living Christ, who has 
given to His own the promise, “‘ Lo, I am with you 
alway, even unto the end of the world.” Yes, it is a 
true saying that Christ is risen, for the heartfelt ex- 
perience of every true Christian testifies of this. O . 
that we all would believe it more firmly and experience 
it more happily! 

Now, if this message is true, it is also worthy of all 
acceptation. Permit me to remind you of this briefly 
by proving to you from the Scripture how this accep- 
tation enables us to believe properly, to live godly, and 
to die happily. These are the weighty words of the 
Scripture, “ If Christ be not raised, your faith is vain; 


196 CHRIST IS RISEN 


ye are yet in your sins. Then they also which are 
fallen asleep in Christ are perished.” 

Christ is risen! It is a message which really enables 
us to believe properly, for if Christ be not raised our 
faith is in vain. Beloved, if Christ is not risen, in 
whom do we believe? Do we believe in Him as a wise 
teacher, a noble man, a pious master, but after all only 
aman? Then upon a man we are baptized, to a man 
we go to church, to a man we pray, and to honor a man 
we celebrate the Lord’s Supper, it is a man whom we 
accept as our model, following in His footsteps and 
calling Him our Saviour and Redeemer. Is this the 
proper faith, built upon a rock? Can a mere man 
save us, though he be the wisest and the best? He 
may be able to comfort and teach us, yet as such he 
cannot save us or reconcile us to God. Dare we pray 
to any man, though he be the noblest and the purest? 
We may respect such a man, love, admire, and imitate 
him, but worship, believe in and put our trust in him— 
never, no, never. If Christ is not risen, then is our 
faith vain. 

But, blessed be God, Christ is risen; and it is this 
which justifies our faith. He, who was taken from 
the cross on Good Friday’s evening, and whose body 
they placed in the grave, stands before the world 
crowned with victory as the King of glory, as the 
Prince of life, as the Son of the ever-living God. And 
now the Father’s declaration, ‘This is my beloved 
Son, in whom I am well pleased,” has been proved. 
Now the divine Amen has been pronounced upon the 
word of the Son, “It is finished.” Now are His ene- 


C. H. RUESSKAMP 197 


mies smitten by their own word, “ He trusted in God; 
let him deliver him now, if he will save him. For he 
said, I am the son of God.” Now our faith is not vain. 
Now we know in whom we have believed. We believe 
in, pray to, and call ourselves after Him ‘‘ whom God 
himself hath exalted and given a name which is above 
all other names, that in the name of Jesus every knee 
should bow of things in heaven, and things on earth, 
and things under the earth, and that every tongue 
should confess that Christ is Lord, to the glory of God 
the father.” True is the message and worthy of all 
acceptation, because it enables us to believe properly. 
And it helps us to live godly. “ If Christ hath not 
been raised, ye are yet in your sins.” If Christ re- 
mained in the grave, who will then help us out of our 
sins, out of our sin-guiltiness, out of our sin-service? 
Not He, for in that case, He is Himself a poor victim 
of sin and not a divine expiator of sin. His blood, then, 
cannot cleanse us of sin, for it is only the blood of a 
human martyr. Then His spirit cannot deliver us from 
the bondage of sin, because it is not a divine, life-giving 
spirit. If Christ is not risen, we are yet in our sins, 
notwithstanding Gethsemane and Golgotha. In our 
sins we will continue to live as under a heavy load, and 
never, not even after striving for holiness, can we truly 
rejoice in that blessed assurance, ‘‘ Thy sins be for- 
given thee.” In our sins we shall die, and not even the 
best among us can look hopefully beyond in the solemn 
eternity with the assurance, “‘ Christ is here; who will 
condemn?” But now, blessed be God, Christ is risen, 
and by this faithful and acceptable word not only the 


198 _ CHRIST IS RISEN 


stone from the door of Christ’s sepulcher is rolled 
away, but also the burden of sin from our conscience. 

Now we have a divine expiator of our sin, whose 
expiatory sacrifice has been accepted of God and 
acknowledged by Him. Now we have a loving guide, 
who reaches out His strong hand to us to guide us in 
the path of holiness. Now we have a mighty advocate 
with the Father, who at His right hand makes interces- 
sion for us. Now we have a heavenly head, on whom 
as living members we shall continue to grow through 
all eternity. Now we can of a truth live godly lives. 

Finally, in this faith we can die happily. “ If Christ 
be not raised, then they also which are fallen asleep 
in Christ are perished. If in this life only we have 
hope in Christ, we are of all men most miserable.” If 
the grave is our last limit, if annihilation is our eternal 
lot, then the Christian with his forebodings of heaven 
and thoughts of eternity, with his tender conscience 
and his daily crucifixion of the flesh is worse off than 
the careless Sadducee who says, ‘‘ Let us eat and drink 
and be merry, for tomorrow we die.” Then the Cre- 
ator has manifested more regard for the tiny midge, 
which for a short day plays in the sunbeam, desiring 
nothing more; more regard for the butterfly, which 
during one short summer flies over the fields, needing 
nothing but a little honey; more regard for these than 
for man, living on through the years, thirsting for 
immortality. 

If all who have fallen asleep in Jesus are lost; if all 
those faithful souls who have hopefully folded their 
hands in the struggle of death with the pious ejacula- 


C. H. RUESSKAMP 199 


tion of Saint Stephen, “‘ Lord Jesus, receive my spirit ”’; 
if all the pious fathers and mothers, all the dear chil- 
dren, teachers and friends over whose graves we have 
comforted ourselves with the great Christian hope that 
their bodies will be awakened by the Lord Jesus in 
His own great day, having commended their spirits into 
the hands of the Saviour; if all these are lost, with their 
bodies a prey to corruption and with their spirits a 
victim of annihilation, what a fearful loss it is. If with 
all my believing and hoping, with all my struggling and 
suffering I can gain nothing beyond, with my body be- 
coming food for worms and my spirit bursting like a 
bubble in the air, then I repeat what I said at the be- 
ginning, that our life upon earth is like a dark night 
upon earth with no morning-dawn to follow, a harsh 
dissonance with no reconciling finale. 

But a glorious light shines out through our gloom. 
It is the light of an unshakable hope in our immortality. 
We live through the toils and gains and stresses of the 
years, reaching out to the greater, vaster, purer life in 
Him, who is the giver of life itself. And we die happily 
in the knowledge that we enter with Jesus into that 
larger life which strikes out beyond the grave. 

‘“‘ But now is Christ risen from the dead and become 
the first fruits of them that slept.” O what a beautiful 
finale to our text. O what a faithful, precious word, 
worthy of all acceptation. Trusting upon it we can die 
happily. Now you mourners, with good cheer visit the 
graves of your loved ones this day and say, “ Be at 
rest, ye mortal bodies.” Now ye pilgrims all, approach 
your own graves and remember for your comfort that 


200 CHRIST IS RISEN 


after a short rest your bodies shall surely rise from 
the grave. 


PRAYER 


Now, exalted Saviour, most adorable head of Thy 
Church, we at Thy grave lift our eyes heavenward with 
confidence. The peace of Thy grace will surround our 
own graves. When tired of earth’s toils, we shall lie down 
with the happy hope of a glorious resurrection. Thou 
Prince of life, who didst break asunder the bonds of the 
tomb, draw us through-death and the grave to the home 
of the redeemed, where with them we shall forever sing, 
“Glory, hallelujah to the Lamb that has reconciled us to 
the Father.’ Amen. 


MERTON S. RICE 


Dr. Rice was born in the state of Kansas; and it was 
while he was a student at Baker University that he formed 
a life long friendship with the late Bishop William Alfred 
Quayle—a friendship which has contributed generously to 
his remarkable ministry. Before coming to Detroit he 
was minister at the First Methodist Church in Duluth, a 
great church in a great city. Since 1914 he has been at the 
Metropolitan Methodist Church in this city, where he 
preaches to one of the largest congregations in his denomi- 
nation, worshiping in one of the finest church buildings in 
America. “ Dust and Destiny ” is the best of the several 
invigorating books which he has written. Whenever I 
hear Dr. Rice, I am bound to think of what Malcolm 
Spencer, a gifted young English author, says about 
preaching. He says, “ Very often it is the poetic beauty of 
the phrase rather than its value as an instrument of defi- 
nition, that makes it able to convey a vision of God or of 
goodness.” ‘That is one element in the preaching which 
attracts great audiences twice a Sunday to Metropolitan. 
It is the gift of poetic expression, which invests common- 
place incidents and humble texts with infinite meaning, 
beauty, and strength. Wonderfully endowed with phys- 
ical energy, moral earnestness, and poetic expression Dr. 
Rice has given an invaluable ministry to this city. Prot- 
estantism claims him as its clarion voice, crying aloud 
against sin and summoning every man to Christ. 


WHY I STAY IN THE MINISTRY—I stay in the 
ministry for exactly the same reason I entered the mm- 
istry. I entered st with a conviction for a task. I remain 
entered in order to spend my ltfe in geting my task done. 
When my very dear personal friend, Wiliam Alfred 
Quayle, came to die, after his eloquent tongue had been 
stilled and he could no longer speak, he smpressively 
pointed with his expressive finger to the words recorded 
im the first book of Thessalontans in the second chapter 
and fourth verse; and made sign to have them hewn on 
the stone that marks his grave, “ Allowed of God to be put 
in trust with the gospel.’ That, too, is my inspiration im 
this task. It means more to me now than ever before; but 
my whole purpose in the ministry may be expressed m 
those words of divine entrustment. I dare not falter here. 

—M. S$. Rice. 





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“ And it came to pass after awhile, that the brook dried up.” 
—I Kines 17:7. 
“And the barrel of meal wasted not.’—I Kines 17: 16. 


There is so much more in the Bible than what is 
written there. It constantly confounds me with its 
overplus of meaning. Simple phrases that are recorded 
in inconspicuous manner run far in influence and in- 
terpretation along the ways of life. 

I have taken to text for this sermon two phrases, 
each torn from a verse, descriptive in contrast of situ- 
ations attendant upon one of the very interesting inci- 
dents of the Old Testament. In the sweep of the 
general narrative here, the detailed meanings of such 
phrases as I have chosen to pause before are easily 
lost. We get interested in the great story of a drouth, 
and hurry on the rain of deliverance; and in our rush 
with the general story we trample over in carelessness 
the finest things attendant. The drouth is‘not the im- 
portant matter here. The people in the drouth are the 
main issue. 

This chapter begins with a brook and ends with a 
barrel. The brook failed; the barrel never wasted. 


203 


204 BROOK AND BARREL 


Elijah, by divine direction, had hidden himself from 
the fast increasing suffering, attendant upon a serious 
drouth, over beside a lovely little refreshing brook 
bearing a refreshing name, Cherith. There was a 
strange satisfaction that came over the endowed 
prophet as he stretched himself in the cooling grass 
that was growing close beside the assuring brook. As 
the drouth increased its hot encroachment over the 
land, Elijah all alone, save for the winged servants that 
brought his scant but sufficient meals, became so used 
to the brook’s contribution that it became a part of the 
expected experience. It was there when he came. He 
came because it was there. There was no thought but 
that the brook was permanent. 

Suddenly, in the midst of the narrative as it seemed 
inclined to an easy satisfaction, there is written in this 
verse of our text, “ And it came to pass after awhile 
that the brook dried up.” It carries the crack of a 
whip of compulsion, suddenly appearing in a scene of 
endowed comfort. This man, long hidden and cared 
for, was forced to move out. His orders were even as 
strange as his disappointment was. He was sent over 
to a heathen city, and even to a poor heathen widow 
woman, who with her son had barely been able thus 
far, amid the general suffering, to keep soul and body 
together. He found her making ready the mixing of 
the very last handful of meal she possessed; and dared 
ask her to share her food even in desperation with a 
stranger. It surprised her. She sought to explain the 
seriousness of the request; but was finally persuaded, 
believing doubtless that nothing but starvation was 


MERTON S. RICE 205 


before them all, and it was little choice to starve by 
the quicker route of a few bites less in the final meal. 
It must have seemed strange to this wanderer, who had 
just faced away from Cherith because it dried up, to 
speak as though with authority, that though the brook 
failed the barrel could not waste. But so he spake; 
and so it happened in Zerephath. 

My interest here now lies in this significant con- 
trast—the brook dried up; the meal barrel wasted not. 
What is the basis of this contrast? The dry brook and 
the unfailing barrel. 

One of the most interesting rides it has ever been my 
privilege to take is along that winding road from Jeru- 
salem to Jericho. It is interesting because of com- 
pelled memories that attend the way. The scenery is 
by comparison scant; but the remembrances are im- 
pressive. The Jericho road! I saw the thieves there 
still, but not active. The Good Samaritan I did not 
notice; but at least missed him in response to the 
great story our Lord wrote along that way, and got it 
out to the world. 

When we had accomplished a bit more than half of 
the journey and were almost ready to begin the last 
real steep descent leading from the hills down into the 
Jordan Valley, the old sheik of a fellow, who was pro- 
fessing to be a guide, stopped the rig in which we rode; 
and we stepped out and walked only a few steps to the 
easy crest of a little ambling hillock, beyond which we 
had not been able to see from our passing carriage. 
The suddenly disclosed view was easily the most im- 
pressive we had enjoyed along the way. Just beside 


on™ 
a” ¥ ; 


206 BROOK AND BARREL 


our roadway, but impossible to be seen from it because 
of the natural concealment of the rising ridge, lay a 
wonderful ravine, almost possessing proportions of a 
canyon. A great precipitous gorge. It is called Wady 
Kelt. As we stood gazing into it with the mere interest 
of scenery, that interest was suddenly enlarged by some 
information that transformed mere landscape into 
significant association. 

“This is the brook, Cherith, where Elijah was fed 
by the ravens.”” The sentence was spoken in that arti- 
ficial manner known only to guides who learn their 
sentences, and speak them like bits of animated ma- 
chinery might speak. But the words surely did awaken 
my interest. The old dust-blown hills along the toiling 
way had all been so dry. That is a dry, dead-looking 
country even when there is no drouth around to empha- 
size it. We had felt sorry for a few sheep and goats 
we had seen hunting pasturage along almost bare hill- 
sides. Some wearied-looking camels of a caravan we 
had seen resting beside the way and smelling about 
dried little ditches for a few mouthfuls of dead grass. 

It was all magnified now by memory that came 
painting all this in terms of a terrible drouth. As I 
looked over the precipitous edge to see far below me in 
the gracefully marked bottom of it all, a lovely green 
line of vegetation just clinging affectionately to the 
tracings of a tiny stream of water that sprang from a 
hillside spring, the commentary of the guide’s words 
was at hand. Whether or no the spot was exact in its 
location was of little concern to me. Such little mat- 
ters as that are soon dismissed by folks who depend 


MERTON S. RICE 207 


upon professional guides. I turned to my Baedeker; 
and all it said was one of those famous observations 
written in cold language, ‘‘ This is not the correct 
place.” It said nothing whatever as to where the cor- 
rect place might be. Critics can spoil anything. Ana- 
lyzers will wreck sentiment. I almost threw the book 
over the precipice had I not remembered the brother 
from India who broke the microscope for what it 
showed him of his sacred river. So I hunted the words 
of more critics. They told me the ravens spoken of in 
the Bible were not birds; and that Elijah had been 
helped in his need for food by a tribe living there who 
were called ravens by name. Then I found a comment 
about some old hermit who did actually live by the side 
of that little creek, subsisting upon four raisins a day 
until he died. I do not know how soon he died. I do 
know that anyone anywhere can live upon four raisins 
a day until death arrives. In fact, one could subsist 
on one raisin a week until he died. 

I put the comments of the guide books back into my 
pocket, and asked the old guide, whose words remained 
ever the same, to say it again, while I looked stead- 
fastly into the chasm. Far below me and on the oppo- 
site bluff, I could see an old monastery named after St. 
George. It clings there like some great mud-swallow’s 
nest, but has been built as a place of confinement for 
troublous priests, a veritable ecclesiastical penitentiary. 
I could tell by the well-worn path which toiled a hard 
way up to it that they were depending there on folks 
rather than birds to bring food to them. 

But, right or wrong on mere geography, it was an im- 


208 BROOK AND BARREL 


pressive place to stand, looking down into such scenery 
as Wady Kelt affords and thinking of Elijah, the 
prophet. And while I stood looking, I confess boldly 
that it did not harm my thoughts any when I saw, 
winging their way along that canyon’s route, three or 
four old cawing crows. ‘The Scripture insisted on 
memory. 

““ Get thee hence, and turn eastward, and hide thy- 
self by the brook Cherith which is before Jordan. And 
it shall be that thou shalt drink of the brook; and I 
have commanded the ravens to feed thee.” 

‘So he went, and did according unto the word of the 
Lord; for he went and dwelt by the brook Cherith. 
And the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the 
morning and bread and flesh in the evening. And he 
drank of the brook. And it came to pass after awhile 
that the brook dried up, because there had been no 
rain in the land.” 

Thus the Bible graphically describes the story, which 
turns at once to Zerephath, and brings attention to the 
meal barrel that refused to waste. The contrast is 
what attracts my attention now. The brook dried up; 
the meal barrel wasted not. Why? 

The brook named Cherith was a good place to hide 
and train Elijah. Cherith means separated. It is an 
essential training in religion. ‘The prophet was sent 
out there alone in preparation. Not that such separa- 
tion is an object worthy. That was the mistake made 
by the monk. He went off alone just to be holy by 
himself. That is no way to be holy. It would be use- 
less holiness, even if it could be had so. Savanarola 


MERTON S. RICE 209 


lived through a period when Paul’s description of the 
adversaries of the true faith was perfectly worked out: 
“World rulers of this darkness and spiritual hosts of 
wickedness in heavenly places.”” What wonder, then, 
that a man such as was Savanarola, of the finest moral 
sense and deepest spiritual convictions, was driven 
across the mountains to-Florence by a war wielded by 
the merciless hand of an arrogant, ambitious Pope, who 
actually died of rage because of the conclusion of 
peace. What wonder that Savanarola did hide for a 
while in a cell. I was glad to step into his old cell one 
day, and seat myself in the hard old chair he used. 
But the great meaning beyond that cell of his there was 
that he never went there as a place for him to stay. 
He came forth with a blazing soul, aflame with con- 
victions to destroy forever the hated sin from which 
he had fled. There on the walls of that old cell today, 
in a glass case, hang a few old charred sticks of wood | 
that have borrowed a never-dying interest from the 
fact that they were part of the pyre that burned him 
yonder in the Piazza della Signoria, because he insisted 
in coming forth from that cell. 

Never mind the cell unless from it you come forth. 
That is, after all, the strange fascination to my thought 
at Cherith with Elijah. Seclusion is no place for a real 
life to be spent. You have no right to hide away unless 
you expect there to make ready to come forth. “ And 
the brook dried up.” That brought him out. As long 
as the brook ran refreshingly to him, he stayed at 
Cherith. The brook ought to dry up at the door of 
every hiding-place of real human helpfulness. As long 


210 BROOK AND BARREL 


as Elijah could be fed in Cherith he never even knew 
there was a widow woman with a poor son about to 
starve to death, to whom his coming meant salvation. 
That dried-up brook drove the thirsty, hungry prophet 
out of Cherith and selfish separation up to Zerephath 
to find a desperation wherein he could be of help, as 
well as to discover his own salvation. It has always 
been, and even now it is strangely so, that dried 
brooks and meal barrels that waste not have a strange 
connection. 

Out of Cherith to Zerephath! Let me ask now for 
the location of contentment. See Elijah alone in his 
secreted place. There he lies in comfortable confi- 
dence stretched out on the green grass that grew 
beside a trickling stream in the midst of the drouth- 
dried land. Every morning and every evening the 
winged breakfast and the winged supper. ‘“ Surely 
here is contentment; I am secure,” says he. ‘‘ No man 
sees me; I see nobody. I eat my own meals. I drink 
from my brook.” 

A reasonable amount of that might do, perhaps, if 
some one could surely decide on reasonableness. But, 
after all, when it comes to genuine satisfaction in life, 
a real man had rather starve among others to whom he 
could really be a companion and a helper, than keep 
himself fat and even comfortable all alone in self- 
centered indulgence. I imagine the most despised and 
disgusting character our period of history has gener- 
ated will prove to be, when we get far enough to see 
the real perspective of history, that craven, fear-struck, 
selfish Kaiser, who ran away from the results his 


MERTON S. RICE 211 


country and people had to stand, and hid himself in a 
little Dutch Cherith in a castle beside a canal. Wait 
till that brook dries up. 

I can see Elijah that dry, dry day wandering along 
the parched, dried bed of that long refreshing brook, 
turning over the hot, sun-baked rocks that only yes- 
terday were wet and cool. The stream has actually 
failed. 

There is so much so-called faith demanding a full 
stream. There is a challenge to the man who has to 
stand on the edge of a dry brook. It is my purpose 
now to hunt out a few specific lessons here to witness 
the advance at once from a brook that fails to a meal 
barrel that does not waste. It was God’s purpose, 
then, and He proposes no less now for every one of us, 
that a hidden servant was wrong. Faith in God is not 
a condition to be hidden in some secret canyon as a 
personal security policy. It is rather an endowment 
to carry into the midst of life to sustain need with. 
The great ministry of religion is not to endow in- 
dulgence with a divine security. If this were the case, 
every canyon would be occupied. Indulgent Elijahs 
would be stretched out beside every available stream. 

Religion has always suffered at this point. God has 
been compelled to dry up many a brook to save His 
people. Elijah became self-centered while the brook 
ran full. He sent no invitations to famishing folks to 
come and drink at his good brook. He would have 
forgotten other folks absolutely, had the brook ran on. 
When he got in trouble, then he thought of others. 
“My brook is dry! ” I wonder if he had been eager 


212 BROOK AND BARREL 


to share his brook with others, would it have failed? 
That is the exact point of my contrasting interest in 
the unwasting meal barrel. It was all but gone. One 
more meal and it would have been done. The dear 
little old mother and her underfed boy were out get- 
ting sticks to cook the very last handful of meal they 
could scrape from the bottom of that wasting barrel. 
Now comes an outsider. Someone else asks for a 
share. ‘‘ Give me to eat!” ‘‘ Who are you? ”’, asks 
the surprised woman. ‘I am the man who has been 
hiding out here beside Cherith. It was a lovely brook. 
No one else knew about it. I lay myself down beside 
it, and drank to my fill.” “ Did you ever invite any 
thirsty folks over to drink with you?” ‘ No, I never 
did. I was hidden; and I was never sure what sort of 
an outcome was ahead of me, so I drank of my own 
brook. But yesterday it dried up.” 

“Oh,” said the wondering old woman, “ did your 
brook go dry?” ‘“ Yes,” said the worn and weary 
prophet, “‘ and I had to leave there.” ‘“‘ But why do 
you come now to beg of me, a poor, ill-fed woman with 
a poor, ill-fed boy, asking me to share with you the 
very last and sparse meal we have left? There is 
really not enough for one, and but a poor satisfaction 
for the two of us, while for three the very idea is fool- 
ishness.”” But the man, who by himself had seen the 
brook go dry, now insisted that they share with him 
and see a strange plenty. His insistence won: and the 
meal barrel wasted not. 

From that dry brook to that unwasting barrel is a 
wonderful distance in religious meaning. God can’t 


MERTON S. RICE 213 


build Him great and helpful prophets hidden away to 
live in a selfish comfort. What the world has to suffer, 
God’s people must know. What pangs are stricken 
into the souls of the world, must also strike their mean- 
ing into the prophet’s life. A big, successful business 
man, whose wealth seemed to insure his own chosen 
conduct, and make possible any manner of life he cared 
to live, said to me one day, ‘‘ I haven’t been in ten 
people’s homes in ten years.”’ His Cherith was running 
full. He didn’t care. He was a good sort of a man, 
too. He knew life all the way from poverty to plenty. 
As a healthy young lad at his father’s death, he found 
himself compelled to join his brother’s hands in the 
dark, dirty job of a coal mine, to help make a living 
for a large family of children. So when at last he did 
get where ease and plenty were his, it would seem he 
knew life all the way along. But his memory was not 
good. Cherith sang in his ears. When he died there 
was still plenty in the stream; and he died alone there 
in its seeming comforts. God don’t always stop Cher- 
ith. Sometimes a lonesome life is brought to a lone- 
some death beside a sheltered and secluded place. The 
mastery of the unfailing stream of plenty is a hard 
task. Not because our great God is impatient with His 
children, but rather because He wants His people never 
to forget others does He sometimes stop Cherith; and 
the brook dries up. 

Elijah had been an exceptional man. That is dan- 
gerous for a religionist. That is the very thing the 
Jewish race as a whole faltered over. That is the liable 
rock that is before them still. They were developed 


214 BROOK AND BARREL 


as a race In a strange manner, and under the special 
watch-care of God. Their Cherith was secure. They 
had escaped Egypt. They were miraculously led all 
the way. Rivers, seas, deserts, wildernesses, all were 
mastered by the all-powerful hand for them. The Jew 
has been beside Cherith. God may have to dry that 
brook before him yet. If he persists in his own proud 
aloofness, it may be necessary that his stream shall fail. 
Careful, now, for we are very close to the most tender 
facts of our contacts with providence. I heard a heart- 
broken man, in the midst of unexpected loss, cry out. 
A little competence in which he had placed his confi- 
dence had suddenly ceased. He tried to solve his dif- 
ficulty wrongly. He said, “‘ I haven’t been a bad man. 
If I had been so, I could take this. I have tried to 
serve God. I have always tried to do so. This is too 
much for me to bear.” It was the echo of that ancient 
struggle. The devil tried hard to get a prejudiced posi- 
tion in his claim that Job was a good man because of 
what he got out of life. ‘Does Job fear God for 
nought?’ You have hedged him about. He serves 
for pay. Cherith attracts. That is dangerous talk. 
Cherith would buy allegiance. But let that brook dry 
up; and then take note. 

That is the fine lesson that comes creeping out from 
that drying day and the failing stream. Elijah had to 
come out. He came out among others who were in 
trouble. Suffering was running down every road. 
Cheriths were dry everywhere. He was one among 
many. So, stopping before a desolate home wrapped 
in real distress, he had full chance to catch the great 


MERTON S. RICE 215 


truth. He looked there into an all but empty meal 
barrel. The real self of the long-hidden prophet at 
once became visible again. He never was designed for 
ease. He was no sort of a man to send off to an easy 
place in which to sleep his life away. ‘At once when he 
glanced into that gaunt barrel, even just from a failing 
brook, the faith of the prophet was challenged; and he 
spoke bravely. ‘“‘ Don’t fear; this meal shall not 
waste; nor shall the cruse of oil fail.”” That refreshes 
me. Here is the new recovered man of God. Elijah 
never lost faith. Before this new test he draws his 
fearless conclusions. The very same God who had 
allowed the brook to dry up was now ready to open a 
new bounty in a meal barrel, and in a heathen city. 

There was far-reaching meaning in all this. Even 
across long centuries it would echo. When critical 
Jews sought to persecute Jesus with questions about 
His conduct, He said with keen memory, “‘ Were there 
no widows in Israel, that Elijah must be sent to a poor 
heathen? ” Elijah, the Jew, a gracious and bounteous 
guest in a heathen widow woman’s home! It would be 
impossible for me to over-emphasize that fact in this 
day of ours. God got closer to Elijah, and through 
Elijah found a new and more intimate way into a 
whole world’s heart, after He compelled him to come 
away from Cherith, and brought him to a poor woman’s 
home to replenish with unfailing assurance the little 
she knew she had. 

The unwasting meal barrel with others is of far 
richer significance than the hidden brook alone. Some 
one has said, I wish I knew to whom I should give 


216 BROOK AND BARREL 


credit, ‘‘ There is no blackboard demonstration that 
God is good; you must risk it or die a coward.” 


PRAVER 

Oh Christ, for whom we have been speaking now, help 
us to bring on down to our day and place the worked out 
meaning of the brook and barrel of long, long ago. We 
would not selfishly consume Thy gracious benefits. We 
would share every richness with which Thou doest entrust 
us. Through us, do Thou get applied meaning for those 
Hees amid which we are privileged to live and work. 

men. 


WARREN L. ROGERS 


Bishop Rogers was born in Allentown, New Jersey, in 
1877, was graduated from the University of Michigan 
in 1907, from Union Theological Seminary in 1911, 
and from the General Theological Seminary in 1912. 
Bishop Williams ordained him Priest in 1911, and he en- 
tered upon his life work as assistant in St. Joseph’s in 
Detroit. Later he became assistant rector of Calvary in 
Pittsburgh and still later he was made rector of St. John’s 
in Jersey City. While at St. John’s he was appointed 
chaplain and served in this capacity through the war. In 
1920 he came to St. Paul’s Cathedral in Detroit, where he 
had been Dean for the past five years. His labors in be- 
half of his church and the city have been indefatigable, 
holding in the church such important positions as Chaplain 
of St. Luke’s Home, Secretary of the Standing Com- 
mittee on the Michigan Diocese, and membership on the 
Board of Bishops, and in the city, invaluable relations to 
many religious and civic groups. In respect to the latter, 
his most notable contribution was made while he acted as 
President of the local Council of Churches. He is the 
author of “‘ Occasional Sermons,” a book full of vital and 
original thinking. While at St. Paul’s he has had oppor- 
tunity to broadcast his remarkable voice by means of the 
radio to the great delight and comfort of many thousands 
in and out of Detroit. Quite recently he has been conse- 
crated Bishop in his church, and is now stationed in Ohio 
as Bishop Coadjutor of the Ohio Diocese of the Protestant 
Episcopal Church. We are sorry to lose him. 


DEEP CALLING UNTO DEEP—Some there are 
who always know they are to be ministers. They grow up 
with that consciousness. ~ There is only one love of thew 
lives—a consuming passion admitting of no alternative. 

At times they wander afar in other fields, in business, m 
professions, in various occupations; but there is only one 
vocation. 

The ministry consumes all interests; it merges all occu- 
pations; it claims all gifts. It draws them as a magnet so 
powerful that they never know any other real pull sn lsfe. 

They do not have to choose, for it is all settled. No 
sacrifice seems unnecessary, no training is long, no duties 
are irksome. They accept all challenges. They strive to 
the uttermost. They simply will be His ministers. It 1s 
the dominate passion of their souls. It 1s life—their life. 

I quite understand them; we are kinsmen. 

—WarREN LINCOLN RoceErs. 


a4 
BEHOLD, THE SOWELR 


WARREN LINCOLN ROGERS, D.D. 
“ Behold, the sower went forth to sow.”’—Marrt. 13: 3. 


We have certain days in the church year for which 
we offer special petitions, and we frequently indicate 
them by very unfamiliar names. Such are the Roga- 
tion seasons, as we call them. We have Rogation Days 
and Rogation Prayers. Few people know what is 
meant by them, although the meaning is very simple. 
Let me give one meaning in a single phrase: “ God 
bless the husbandman, and the fields of the earth that 
they give their increase.” In other words, it is a prayer 
for the farmer. 

This is altogether appropriate at this season of 
the year when the farmers of the country are busy 
preparing the ground for the sowing of the seed. Es- 
pecially is this so when the season has been so unpro- 
pitious as we have experienced this spring, when 
extremely cold weather has been followed by exces- 
sively hot weather. Two farmer friends have informed 
me that they have lost strawberry and tomato crops 
because of this condition. Our newspapers reported 
this week that millions of dollars’ worth of crops have 
perished. So we give more than ordinary attention to 


219 


220 BEHOLD, THE SOWER 


these rogation prayers today in the service of our 
church. 

My sermon concerns the farmer, and for a text you 
recall the parable of our Lord in St. Matthew’s Gospel, 
the thirteenth chapter and the third verse, ‘“ Behold, 
the sower went forth to sow.” 

It is not because any of us are farmers that we 
choose this theme. In fact, most of us never had any- 
thing to do with the farm, although we may have been 
born on a farm and lived there for a time. Such was 
my own case. Yet the pity is that I never stayed long 
enough on the farm to learn anything valuable about 
it, nor could I be of any help in maintaining a farm. 
Some two years ago a man offered me a finely-stocked 
and well-cultivated farm of nearly five hundred acres; 
and I had to say to him, ‘‘ No, thank you, I cannot 
accept the offer.” What a miserable failure I should 
have made trying to be a farmer. 

Most of us are interested in almost everything else 
except the farm and the farmer. Possibly it is good 
for us to center our thought on things other than those 
we habitually deal with every day of the week. We 
have to do with business affairs, with the home and 
school, the counting-house and store, the mill and the 
factory. How refreshing to think of something else. 
It reminds us of the dream which so many of us have 
of how we shall spend our maturer years in some com- 
fortable, delightful place in the country near the city, 
but not a part of it. The present trend in the city is 
toward the country, that is, to certain conditions and 
pleasures of country life. Our suburban populations 


WARREN LINCOLN ROGERS 221 


are growing with amazing rapidity and are a reflection 
of our desire to live somewhat removed from the busy 
and congested activities of our American life. 

Our Lord talked most of the time with city folks, 
with the people from the fishing villages and the little 
towns of Galilee, from the large city centers and the 
metropolis of Jerusalem. Yet you will note that the 
greater part of His parables were taken from country 
life; they had to do with the farm and the farmer. 

I like this parable of the farmer, ‘“ Behold, the 
sower.” As Jesus gave it, He undoubtedly had in mind 
the soils into which the seed was cast, rather than the 
sower himself. We have called it the parable of the 
sower, while our Lord thought mostly of the soils and 
of the various receptions which the seed received. We 
shall disregard this application, and keep to the tradi- 
tional name of the parable, that of the Sower. So our 
theme is, The Sower. 

We are thinking of the man, the sower. The sower 
is always more important than the soils. The farmer 
is of greater value than the farm. Men do not always 
think this way. They try to reverse the order, and 
imagine that it is possible to get farmers at any time, 
but not so easy to get farms. The reason that I de- 
clined the offer of my friend was because I could not 
run that farm, nor could I find anyone else capable of 
doing it, so that we could make a profit on it. And the 
reason my friend offered the farm was because he could 
not find a farmer who could maintain the farm with 
profit to himself, while he was in the city making a lot 
more money than he could hope to make on the farm. 


222 BEHOLD, THE SOWER 


He was learning that the farmer is of the first impor- 
tance. No farm will keep up without the services of 
an expert and industrious farmer. ‘The best farm will 
soon deteriorate without good management. The best 
farms have become such because there were good 
farmers. 

In like manner, the man is always of more value 
than his machine. We have a way of thinking in this 
industrial age that men do not count and that machines 
are everything. Some machines do seem to be almost 
human in their wonderful powers. We stand in awe 
of them as we see them with their artificial arms and 
limbs undertaking tasks which no human strength 
could possibly achieve. Yet it is exceedingly danger- 
ous for any age or nation to accept the philosophy that 
the machine is more valuable than the man. 

Any nation which commits itself to that proposition 
is sure to go on the rocks. History is full of illustra- 
tions of such attempts, and of the ultimate failures 
which ensued. 

Personality is of greater value than any institution. 
We laud the institutions which have come down from 
the past, and we think that they have life and power 
in and of themselves. There are some fine institutions 
in this fair country of ours. We speak proudly of our 
republican forms of government and of the institutions 
which have grown out of our experience in the last cen- 
tury and a half. We think our government is ideal; 
and on the Fourth of July we glorify its institutions 
and regard them as the last word in popular govern- 
ment. They are ideals. They cannot perish. Yet 


WARREN LINCOLN ROGERS 223 


every little while some one suggests a weakness and a 
flaw. Dean Inge, of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the ‘‘ gloomy 
dean ” of London, England, very rightly criticizes our 
institutions and unerringly points out their weaknesses. 
At first we are indignant with him; but when we are 
sober and in our right minds, we know that he is right. 
We have learned that no institution of government can 
long maintain its high standard and ideal influence 
unless we have strong and righteous personalities con- 
trolling it. Free government demands an intelligent 
and self-sacrificing citizenry. The personality of its 
leaders and its people is far more important than any 
form it may create. | 

It is the same with the Church. We have inherited 
wonderful institutions from the past. They have come 
down to us, planted by Divine Grace and nourished 
with the blood of many martyrs. They are full of 
meaning and influence. And yet, of what avail are all 
these forms, ceremonies, traditions, institutions, and 
creeds, if the personality of the Divine Son of God is 
not in them? How foolish many things are, if His 
spirit cannot operate in and through them? What are 
the sacraments, if the incarnate Son of God is not in 
them? The personality of Christ must dominate them 
all—all of these institutions which constitute the 
Church in its multiform operations in the world—else 
most that we have and do is meaningless and power- 
less. Nothing we have can possibly be a substitute 
for the personality of our Lord. 

Yes, the farmer is of more value than his farm. 

The man is of more value than his machine. 


224 BEHOLD, THE SOWER 


Personality is of more value than any institution. 

Behold, the sower; he is of more value than the soils. 

Now, this parable of our Lord is the most pessimistic 
He ever gave. Behold, the sower went forth to sow; 
and some seed fell by the wayside, and it was trodden 
under foot of man, or the fowls of the air devoured it— 
waste effort. Some fell upon stony places and the sun 
scorched it and it died—waste effort. Some fell 
among thorns and they choked it—waste effort. Three 
times this farmer sowed, and three times he failed. 
Why continue? Our efforts are frequently futile. One 
of the hardest lessons we have to learn is that much 
which we have to do seems to come to naught. I well 
remember the fine dreams we students had in college 
and seminary. We were sure that we had the most 
unusual group of young men and that the combined 
results of our efforts when we were all in the ministry 
would achieve great reforms and advancement in the 
Church. As I look back over the intervening years, it 
is a matter of great disappointment to me to see how 
little we have really accomplished. Worst of all, there 
are some of the number who have become heartily dis- 
couraged and have abandoned the ministry. 

John Oxenham tried to teach us the value of such 
reverses and failures in life, especially during the dark 
days of the war, when he wrote: 


“In these dread times, 
Each day we pass unscathed 
Is one day snatched from sorrow. 
Help us to live full-faithed, 
Nor stoop to borrow 


WARREN LINCOLN ROGERS 225 


From a possible tomorrow 

That which may never be; 

But, if it be, 

If still ordained of Thee, that we 
May learn to rise 

Through sacrifice 

To nobler ministry.” 


How different is the tone of that verse from what 
Shelley gives in his pathetic lament, 


“TI could lie down like a tired child, 
And weep away the life of care, 
Which I have borne and yet must bear.” 


There are failures in life. There are waste efforts 
which come to no avail. There are children who never 
know what loving self-sacrificing parents have given 
all their lives. I saw such a son only recently when 
his parents came to the college where he had gotten in 
trouble, and with aching hearts they tried to help him 
along. There are homes which are completely wrecked, 
and businesses which are only a mass of ruins, crum- 
bled about us. God does not promise us success in all 
of our ventures or dreams. Otherwise the book of 
Job was written in vain. There is something more 
important than success, something more worth seeking 
after than just our own whim or fancy, no matter how 
great or useful it may be. It is the sense of peace and 
contentment in our own souls and the consciousness 
that we have labored worthily. 

Success or failure are not the final measure. H. G. 
Wells has suggested a deeper appreciation of life when 
he sums up a most interesting argument by saying, 


226 BEHOLD, THE SOWER 


“Yet, in the background of the consciousness of the 
world, waiting as the silence and moonlight wait above 
the flares and shouts, the hurdy-gurdys and quarrels of 
a village fair, is the knowledge that all mankind is one 
brotherhood; that God is the universal and impartial 
Father of mankind; and that only in that universal 
service may mankind find peace, or peace be found for 
the troubles of the individual soul.” 

Behold, the sower,—three efforts and all failures. 
But he did not stop there. That is the best part of 
the parable. You will recall that great painting of 
Millet, the French artist, as he describes the sower, 
with strident pace and enthusiastic manner, putting 
his hand into the bag of seed he carries, and casting 
the seed ungrudgingly in every direction, letting it fall 
where it will. Some one has called this parable an 
illustration of Human Imbecility, of foolish and sense- 
less social effort which deserves to fail. Why sow 
seed among thorns or on the wayside or on stony 
ground? Of course, no harvest can come from seed 
sown in a stone quarry, or on the Lincoln Highway. 
We are told that much of our efforts in social and 
spiritual betterment are of a similar imbecile nature. 
No one pleads for brainless labor. We assuredly mag- 
nify the necessary common sense that everyone should 
exercise. God gave us brains to use and the experience 
of the human race for the past centuries to guide us in 
all of our work. But we have known of men who 
spent all their time studying the soils and the weather 
conditions, and reading reports and treatises on how 
and when to sow the seed, and then have neither cour- 


WARREN LINCOLN ROGERS 227 


age nor time to sow. We greatly admire those sturdy 
farmers in Montana who, five years ago, faced drought, 
and four years ago endured cold, and three years ago 
suffered the heat, and two years ago saw two hundred 
of their banks fail, and yet this year, when I talked 
with some of them as to whether they would still farm, 
immediately answered, “ Surely we shall sow the seed 
this spring and labor as never before with all of our 
brains and strength for the harvest. We are not quit- 
ting.” This is in accord with the dominant spirit of 
Carlyle as he trenchantly urges, ‘‘ Produce, Produce. 
Were it but the pitifulest infinitesimal fraction of a 
product, produce it in God’s name. It is the utmost 
thou hast in thee; out with it, then.” Elizabeth Barrett 
Browning, more modest yet none the less determined, 
reveals her spirit in writing, 


“T stood up straight and worked 
My veritable work. And as the soul 

Which grows within the child makes the child grow, 
So life, im deepening with me, deepened all 
The course I took, the work I did.” 


Behold, the sower went forth to sow. He did what 
he intended to do. He sowed the seed with a holy 
abandon as if every seed were good and every seed 
would assure a harvest. I like this parable of the 
sower. It has faith and hope and work and power to 
it. It manifests the only spirit which in the end must 
achieve its purpose. Some one answers the question: 
“Why were the saints, saints? Because they were 
cheerful when it was difficult to be cheerful, patient 
when it was difficult to be patient; and because they 


228 BEHOLD, THE SOWER 


pushed on when they wanted to stand still, and kept 
silent when they wanted to talk, and were agreeable 
when they wanted to be disagreeable. That was all. 
It was quite simple and always will be.” Behold, the 
sower went forth to sow. That was his job, and he 
did it. It was God’s business to bring in the harvest. 

But this parable also suggests one of the finest 
optimism we can find in our Lord’s parables. Some 
seed fell on good ground. And it bare fruit,—two per 
cent as we think of in our Government bonds, or four 
per cent as some of our banks pay on savings deposits, 
or Six per cent as we collect on mortgages, or even ten 
per cent as we desire in the nature of dividends on our 
investments? No, the minimum stated is thirty per 
cent, then sixty per cent, and some even a hundred 
per cent. I often wonder how successful a business 
man our Lord would be. There is a real question 
which gives us difficulty at times, 7. e., how far can we 
put our Lord’s teachings into our business affairs. I 
do not know. But it is worth while to try, at least. 
Jesus is amazingly optimistic of life and in life. He 
expresses unquenchable faith, indomitable, eternal. 

John Mills pays a lovely tribute to his friend, John 
Clifford, in his poem called ‘‘ A Memory.” 


“My life grew weary, and, with toil, my spirit broke; 
I met a man I knew, and when he spoke 
I seemed to see the Master; heard him speak 
His message to the weary, and the weak. 
And now I catch his name—the man who made me 
think— 
Till sunlight on the field touched every clod, 
And helped me know I lived and worked with God.” 


WARREN LINCOLN ROGERS 229 


The religion we profess is not a mere human 
impulse. 

It is not an idle dream or a sentimental vanity. We 
are not whistling to keep up our courage. When we 
are confronted with the long; hard tasks of dealing 
with masses of men in the midst of their well-nigh un- 
answerable problems, their conflicting prejudices, their 
inexplicable blindnesses, and their unpardonable sins, 
there is need for the highest courage; a courage which 
can go forth in the name and spirit of the Master to 
seek and to save that which seems undeniably lost and 
ruined. A spiritual dynamic of unusual power is im- 
perative. It can be found only in this well-poised and 
unfailing optimism of Jesus. Work with God can never 
fail. We dare to trust our allies. As the farmer trusts 
the kindly earth, the beneficent sun, the physical forces 
and energies of the universe; as he had confidence in 
the rain and the dew, the sun and the soil; so we, in 
our tasks of life, have infinite faith in the spiritual 
forces and energies of life. From them we receive our 
strength and the assurance of the harvest. 

And so it is that our strength shall be largely multi- 
plied and the harvest shall be greatly increased because 
we have the wisdom and the blessing of our great God 
to attend us in every way of life. 

After all, the question which is raised in this parable 
is this, What kind of a sower are we? We worry about 
the soils and the conditions when we should be most 
concerned as to how we are ourselves. It is not the 
farm, but the farmer. What kind of a sower are we? 
What kind of a citizen? What kind of a churchman? 


230 BEHOLD, THE SOWER 


What kind of a parent? What kind of a brother? Be- 
hold, the sower went forth to sow. Not the soils, but 
the sower. 


PRAYER 


Grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, that with high courage 
and indomitable faith we may sow the seed of truth and 
eternal life, believing in its ultimate achievement, accord- 
ing to Thy Dwsne purposes. May we trust our Allies and 
labor with all our heart, mind and strength. In Thine own 
good time give the harvest; and while we toil, sustain our 
spirits and grant us sweet contentment and a quiet. mind, 
with the blessed consciousness of work well done and a life 
not lwed in vain. Amen. 


MARK F, SANBORN 


Dr. Sanborn was born in Michigan in the year 1877, and 
received his college training at Kalamazoo and his theolog- 
ical training at Chicago, being graduated from Kalamazoo 
College in 1905 and from the Divinity School of Chicago 
University in 1909. His pastorates have been as follows: 
Underwood Memorial Baptist Church, Wauwatosa, Wis- 
consin; Berwyn Baptist Church, Berwyn, Illinois; Judson 
Memorial Baptist Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota; and 
the First Baptist Church, Detroit, where he has been 
preaching since 1922. For the past three years he has 
been the popular president of the Baptist Young People’s 
Union of America, and has given excellent service in the 
many summer Assemblies and Conventions held by this 
great organization of youth. There is no greater privilege 
afforded a Christian minister than that of instructing and 
inspiring the young people, and Dr. Sanborn is accomplish- 
ing this high task among his own congregation and in the 
wider field opened to him through the Baptist Union. His 
great church is situated on Woodward Avenue and is one 
of the Baptist meccas for Michigan. There is a real place 
for “teaching sermons” in this day when so few people 
have any reason for the faith that is within them. ‘This 
sermon is of the right sort; and it gives emphasis to that 
particular kind of thinking which ought to bring a larger 
appreciation of the values of human life. 


THE YOUTH FOR CHRIST—Bishop John H,. Vin- 
cent has wisely said, “ The church that is wise toward its 
youth will shine as the stars.’ The minister who appre- 
ciates the importance of work with young people will make 
a distinct contributton to the advancement of the Kingdom. 

The youth of today will lead the world of tomorrow. 
The direction of that leadership can be largely determined 
by the wise men in the pulpits. The church needs the 
vision, the love of adventure, the courage and enthusiasm 
of youth. Our youth need the miumistry, the sympathy, 
the training and the opportunities for service in the church. 

The wise preacher can lead these two great forces into 
happy union that will add much strength to the program 
of the Christian religion. There is no more promising 
field of endeavor today than that offered by the eager, re- 
sponsive young people of our generation. Win the youth 
of the world to Christ and the Kingdom will come. 

—Mark F, SANBORN. 


AVI 
THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW HIM 


MARK F. SANBORN, D.D. 
First Baptist Church 


“That thy might know Thee, the only true God.’—Joun 17:3. 


The seventeenth chapter of St. John is the Holy of 
Holies of the Bible. In reading this chapter one is re- 
minded of the experience of Moses in the mount when 
God said ‘ put off thy shoes from off thy feet; for the 
place whereon thou standest is holy ground.” 

Into this high-priestly prayer our Lord puts the in- 
most thoughts of his soul. He leads us into the very 
presence of God. He makes known His supreme mis- 
sion in life. It was to lead men to know God, to know 
Him as Father, as the God of love and mercy, and to 
know Him as He is revealed in His Son. Thus to know 
God is to have eternal life. 

Man’s greatest need is to know God. Until a man 
knows God he has not begun to live. He may have 
much knowledge, may have achieved great success, 
may have accumulated a great fortune, or even worn 
a crown; but if he does not know God, he has never 
entered into the true life of high purposes and chal- 
lenging aspirations that make us worthy of our divine 
birthright. 

When Isaiah saw the Lord high and lifted up, he 


233 


234 THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW HIM 


became conscious of his sinfulness, repented and 
responded to God’s call by saying, ‘“ Here am J, 
send me.” 

The Book of Job has one of the greatest messages 
of the Bible for our time. You recall how Job lost his 
property, his sons and daughters, and then disease 
seized his body. In a discouraged and distracted con- 
dition Job found his way to the garbage heap outside 
the city walls. Hither his friends came, three of them, 
with their traditional theology, their emphasis upon 
certain dogmas of the past, inferring that Job must 
have sinned and that this suffering was God’s just 
punishment. 

Elihu, the younger friend, a man of more liberal 
ideas, next presented his newer interpretation of. the- 
ology. But traditional orthodoxy, hoary dogmas, or 
even modern philosophy didn’t help Job out of his 
troubles. And similar debates, statements of creeds 
and hollow repetitions of outgrown traditions will not 
save the distracted world of our day. 


“ Our little systems have their day; 
They have their day and cease to be; 
They are but broken lights of thee, 
And thou, O Lord, art more than they.” 


In a way Job represents our world. The great war 
swept away the material possessions of many nations. 
Statisticians tell us no less than thirty millions of 
human beings, mostly our sons and daughters, lost 
their lives in the war and since the war, because of the 
war. ‘Today the world is distracted. Jealousy, fear 


MARK F. SANBORN 235 


and lawlessness everywhere abound. Like the friends 
of Job, the fundamentalists and modernists of our 
day are offering their suggestions, but the world still 
suffers. 

What this troubled, distracted world needs is to 
know God. As you read the last few chapters of the 
Book of Job, you will find that when God is revealed 
to Job, everything is made right in his life. His prop- 
erty is restored double, more sons and daughters are 
born to him and he is restored to perfect health and 
happiness. 

Man can never be satisfied until he thus knows 
God. St. Augustine was right when he said, ‘“‘ Thou 
hast made us for Thyself and we cannot rest until we 
rest in Thee.” When Paul preached at Athens he 
told the Greeks that men are the offspring of God, 
who ‘‘ made of one every nation of men to dwell on 
the face of the earth, ... that they should seek 
God if haply they might feel after him and find him.” 
Man is by nature religious. Go where you will, among 
the most primitive and backward peoples, and you 
will find some form of religion. Man craves the 
knowledge of God. Miaillions are saying, ‘“‘ Oh, that I 
knew where I might find Him, that I might come to 
His seat! ” 

Thank God, it is possible for all to know Him. In 
a thousand ways He seeks to make Himself known to 
His children. The universe is His autobiography. 
The heavens declare the knowledge of God. Some 
people in these days seem to fear science. But every 
day men who really study the laws of nature and all 


236 THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW HIM 


the wonders and glories of our material universe 
are being enriched by an ever-expanding knowledge 
of God. The study of astronomy has given us a 
vastly greater conception of God. As we grasp the 
infinite immensity of the universe, the omnipotence of 
God becomes evident. The study of the laws of de- 
velopment and growth in biology and geology gives 
us new and greater knowledge of God as an all-wise 
Creator. 

The study of psychology has revealed the reality 
and power of faith. Our new knowledge of ancient 
languages, records and literatures has opened to our 
generation great vistas of new knowledge of God’s 
self-revelation. 

There is nothing to fear from the study of science. 
Through it multitudes have been led to a real, vital 
faith in God. Jesus said, ‘“‘I am the way, the truth 
and the life.’ All truth, if it is sought in reverence, 
will lead to the knowledge of God. ‘The teacher in 
the public school, in the college or university has a 
golden opportunity of leading the eager young minds 
of the students into the knowledge of God. Leave 
God out of science and there is nothing left but the 
shell. If our hearts are in tune with the Infinite, all 
true knowledge will reveal God. Mrs. Browning said: 


“ Farth’s crammed with heaven, 
And every common bush afire with God: 
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes.” 


All new knowledge of God should be welcomed. 
God is the great, unchangeable reality. But men 


MARK F. SANBORN 237 


change. Modern science and modern means of trans- 
portation have given us a new world. And yet the 
world is the same. It is our knowledge and experience 
that have changed. A thousand years ago men knew 
only a flat earth, that revolves on its axis. Has the 
earth changed? No. We have changed; our knowl- 
edge and experience have changed. 

So in the realm of theology. Each generation gains 
new means of Bible study and new knowledge and 
experience of God. The old realities of religion are 
unchanging and unchangeable. The modern historical 
method of Bible study and the modern scientific means 
and methods of increasing knowledge are our allies, 
not our enemies. They have been given to us “ that 
we might know Him.” 

But the supreme revelation of God is given us 
through His Son, our Jesus Christ. He said, “ He 
that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him 
that sent me.” His supreme mission in life was to 
make God known. In this prayer, He pleads for a 
glorified life that He may glorify the Father. As fol- 
lowers of our Lord, we, too, must pray for a glorified 
life that we may glorify Him. This glorified life comes 
as we reflect like a mirror the character of God, until 
we become transformed into the same image, and then 
we, too, will be able to say “ He that hath seen me 
hath seen the Father.” 

Again Jesus said in this wonderful prayer, “ I mani- 
fested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me 
out of the world.” To manifest is to make plain to 
sight or understanding, to show clearly or distinctly, 


238 THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW HIM 


to make obvious, to display, to exhibit. It is as though 
the Master said, “‘ Father, I have sought to display in 
My life Your characteristics, in order that men who 
see Me might see and know You.” 

To manifest is more than to preach or to teach. It 
is to exemplify God, to show Him in our daily living. 
Christian workers can learn from salesmen or window 
decorators. How attractively the goods are displayed 
where people will see them and desire them. So we 
who are ambassadors of God, to whom has been com- 
mitted the ministry of reconciliation, we who are sent 
‘even as he was sent,” are to display in our daily 
lives the character of God. We are to let our light 
shine that men may see our clean lives and our good 
works and come to know and glorify God. 

Religious education, as a means of making God 
known, is one of the chief functions of the Christian 
Church. Boys and girls, men and women must be led 
to know God. We need preaching, we need evangel- 
ism, we need social service, but today our supreme 
need is a new emphasis on teaching. The great com- 
mission that says ‘‘Go preach the gospel to every 
creature,’ also says, “‘ Teaching them to observe all 
things whatsoever I commanded you.” 

Our Lord emphasized teaching, both by precept 
and example. In the Gospels He is referred to as 
“teacher ” over fifty times. He Himself accepted the 
name when He said, “ Ye call me Teacher and Lord 
and ye say well, for so I am.” 

Professor A. B. Bruce, in a large volume on The 
Training of the Twelve, calls our attention to the fact 


MARK F. SANBORN 239 


that most of Christ’s public ministry was devoted to 
the training of the men who were to carry on His mis- 
sion, were to preach the Gospel to all men that they 
might know God, teaching them to observe all His 
commands. Jesus was a good example of the wisdom 
shown by Paul’s advice to Timothy when he says, 
“The things which thou hast heard from me among 
many witnesses, the same commit thou to faithful men 
who shall be able to teach others also.” 

The common people with whom Jesus mingled nearly 
always addressed Him as Rabbi, or Teacher. Even 
the Pharisees said, ‘‘ Rabbi, we know that thou teach- 
est the way of God in truth.” When the multitudes 
heard Him they said, ‘‘ What is this? A new teach- 
ing?” Nicodemus listened to His wonderful words 
of wisdom and of life and exclaimed, ‘‘ Rabbi, we know 
thou art a teacher come from God; for no one can 
do these signs that thou doest, except God be with 
him.” 

No one can overestimate the tremendous revival 
of religion that would result if the Church would 
take seriously her God-given task of Christian edu- 
cation and follow its conscientiously for even a single 
generation! 

Jesus understood the needs and capacities of people 
and, by appealing to the common experiences of their 
life, led them to think for themselves of the eternal 
realities of God. Everything led to the knowledge of 
God. He spoke of the birds, the flowers, the seasons, 
the clouds, the trees, the farmer, the merchant, the 
women working in the home, the little children, the 


240 THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW HIM 


man who was robbed and the Good Samaritan who 
helped him. He told the story of the lost coin, the 
lost sheep, the lost son, and the rejoicing when they 
were found. Through all His teaching He is leading 
people to know God. 

The Church has reasons to take courage. More 
and more our schools and colleges and _ theological 
seminaries are placing emphasis on religious educa- 
tion. The teaching function of the Church is being 
recognized as of equal importance with that of preach- 
ing. As people are taught to know God they will love 
and follow Him. Educational evangelism outweighs 
emotional evangelism. Our missionaries realize the 
necessity of teaching. ‘To win persons to discipleship 
through preaching and then leave them without ade- 
quate training is wasteful folly. 

What is true on the missionary fields is equally true 
in the homeland. Provision must be made for the 
training of the parents of our scholars. This may call 
for a readjustment of our program and of our budgets, 
but its importance requires that we be ready to make 
the change, cost what it may. 

As Protestants, we are far behind Roman Catholics 
and Jews in their emphasis on the religious education 
of children. But we are fast awaking to its impor- 
tance. The Church Vacation School has become an 
important means of religious education of thousands 
of boys and girls during the summer weeks. 

Week-day religious instruction by competent, paid 
teachers, for certain regular periods each week taken 
from public school time, and for which credit is given, 


MARK F. SANBORN 241 


promises much for the future. The Church’s responsi- 
bility extends to all the boys and girls of the commun- 
ity. Many more can be reached through the week-day 
school. The teaching is on a par with the best received 
from the trained teachers of the public school. It is 
more systematic, regular, and much greater in extent 
than the usual half-hour period of instruction per week, 
which is the average in most church schools. 

Jesus not only led people to know God; He care- 
fully guarded them. In this great prayer three words 
stand out as indicating the Master’s interest in His 
followers: “I pray for them. .. . I kept them in thy 
name. . . . I guarded them, and not one of them per- 
ished.” As our children or young people or even 
adults are brought to know God, do we thus guard and 
keep them? 

It is not enough to baptize people and welcome 
them into our membership, then send them out into 
an unfriendly or even an evil atmosphere. More and 
more must the Christian Church assume responsibility 
for the social conditions surrounding our people. Some 
form of group organization in the churches of larger 
membership is essential, Every member who is led 
to know God must be prayerfully guarded, trained and 
enlisted in the service of the kingdom. 

The organized young people’s society under one 
name or another has been blessed of God for the past 
forty years as a means of holding and training the 
youth of the churches. To be most helpful it must 
always be used as a means and not as an end. Its 
program and form of organization will change to meet 


24.2 THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW HIM 


the changing conditions of life and the changing 
methods of work in the Church. Thousands of Chris- 
tian leaders in the pew and the pulpit, in the Church 
school and in the Christian college, in the home, in 
business, in the trades and professions, owe much of 
their training for leadership to some organized young 
people’s society in the local church. 

“That they might know thee” could well serve as 
the motto for all our Christian work. All programs 
and organizations, all preaching and teaching should 
be a means to that great end. With such a goal in 
mind no worker and no church can go far astray. This 
great ideal will give the Church a new passion and a 
new enthusiasm for our work. 

The lack of an adequate knowledge of God is the 
source of the world’s woe and misery. When we know 
Him as the God of justice we can no longer exploit our 
handicapped or weak brothers, it matters not what the 
color of their skin is or to what race or nation they 
chance to belong. From millions of toilers there rises 
today the cry for justice. When we know the God of 
Jesus we will want to give justice, because we will want 
to be like Him. 8 

As we come to know Him as a God of love we can 
no longer allow hatred or fear or selfishness to lead us 
into war. And there is little use of trying to outlaw 
war through law, to overcome force through force. 
Let people come to know God as He is revealed in 
Jesus, the paragon of forgiveness and love, and evil — 
will vanish like darkness before the rising sun. 

After more than nineteen hundred years of Christian 


MARK F. SANBORN 243 


effort, almost one-half of the human race is still with- 
out adequate means of knowing God. The Apostle 
Paul said, “‘ Whosoever shall call upon the name of 
the Lord shall be saved. How then shall they call 
upon him in whom they have not believed? And how 
shall they believe in him who they have not heard? 
And how shall they hear without a preacher? And 
how shall they preach, except they be sent? ”’ What 
a mighty challenge to the Church of the living 
Christ! 

In this prayer, our Lord said, ‘‘ O righteous Father, 
the world knew thee not, but I knew thee.” In that | 
statement we have the best explanation of the incar- 
nation. ‘“ Jesus Christ, who existing in the form of 
God, counted not the being on an equality with God a 
thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the 
form of a servant, being made in the likeness of sinful 
men, . . . becoming obedient even unto death, yea, 
the death of the cross.” 

Why did Christ thus come? Why did He thus die 
on the cross? Because the world did not know God, 
but He did. Why did David Livingstone give his life 
in dark Africa? Why did he remain there even after 
Stanley found him and tried to persuade him to yield 
to the pleadings of England and almost all lands that 
he leave Africa and accept the bounties and honors 
that awaited him at home? Why did he remain even 
until his lifeless body was found on that tragic morning 
in the attitude of prayer? There is but one answer. 
The people of dark Africa didn’t know God, but 
Livingstone did. 


244 THAT THEY MIGHT KNOW HIM 


What keeps Dr. Grenfell away up in Labrador? 
We all know of his privations and also of the honors 
and high positions he might have in his home land. 
Why does he stay and suffer and work? Because the 
people of Labrador do not know God, but he does. 

Why does that rural pastor remain away out in that 
home mission field? His family desire and need the 
comforts and educational advantages of the city. But 
still he toils on, underpaid, poorly equipped, often dis- 
couraged. He is there because the people of that lonely 
community do not know God, but he does. 

Why do the brightest and best of our college students 
declare their purpose, if God permit, to go anywhere 
in any land to preach or teach the glorious good news 
of the Christ? The answer is evident. There are mil- 
lions who do not know God, but they do know Him. 

“That they might know thee.” That was the mis- 
sion of our Lord. That is the mission of His Church. 
For that mission our Lord came “ not to be ministered 
unto but to minister and give his life a ransom for 
many.” For that mission He expects the Church to 
give her best, her all. Let us not disappoint Him. 


PRAVER 


O Righteous Father, we thank Thee for light. May we 
have the mind of Christ, remembering that we, too, are 
the light of the world. Help us to let our light shine that 
men may know Thee. Bless the Church and all other 
means of extending the knowledge of Thyself until “ the 
earth shall be full of the knowledge of Jehovah as the 
waters cover the sea.’ In Jesus name. Amen, 


WILLIAM L. STIDGER 


Dr. Stidger was trained at Allegheny College; and his 
Alma Mater granted him an honorary degree in 1923. 
Before coming to Detroit he held successful pastorates in 
San Francisco and San José, California. A year of obser- 
vation at the principal mission stations in Asia together 
with a considerable experience in Europe has given him an 
unusual view of world affairs. Dr. Stidger has preached 
for the past five years at St. Mark’s Methodist Episcopal 
Church. He has taken a Church in a fine residential sec- 
tion fully five miles from the city hall, and has made it a 
church of city-wide influence. The popularity of St. 
Mark’s grows out of the popularity of its preacher, who 
has taken conspicuous part in every political venture of the 
city during these years. With considerable pleasure have 
I heard him say on a number of occasions: “* Woe is me, if 
I preach not the gospel.”’ Ina strange way he has com- 
bined in his preaching a love for the beautiful and a hatred 
for sham and evil. Now you hear him singing such a de- 
lightful song as his own, “ When God washed the world 
last night ;” and, again, you hear him with scathing rebuke 
calling down divine wrath upon social and political offend- 
ers, This sermon is typical of the poetical side of his 
nature, calling men away from the noise and confusion of 
artificial life to the natural and to the eternal. It is with 
regret that we learn of the recent appointment of Dr. 
Stidger to the Linwood Avenue Methodist nae 
Church in Kansas City. 


A NEW HOMILETICS FOR AN OLD MESSAGE 
—One of the most pressing needs of the ministry is a new 
homuletics. Having worked on this problem for the past 
ten years with many attempts at something new in this 
field, I have finally adopted, as a permanent part of my 
preaching program, these new homuletical forms: 


I—The Drama Sermon. 

2—The Dramatic Book Sermon. 
3—The Dramatic Art Sermon. 
4—The Symphonic Sermon. ~~ 


I have tried the Symphonic sermon form for three 
years, and have discovered that this homiletic method ts 
the most popular of all. The sermon which I have con- 
tributed to this book is Symphonic. It was preached in 
my pulpit on April rath, 1925. I consider tt to be my 
most typical kind of sermon, and am glad to pass on some 
of the things which I have learned in the laboratory of life 
and expertence.—WILLIAM L,. STIDGER. 


AVIT 
ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LIFE 


WILLIAM L. STIDGER, D.D. 
St. Mark’s Methodist Episcopal Church 


“As many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” 
—Acts 13:48. 


SYMPHONIC THEME: 


“He heard a voice none else could hear 
From centered and from errant sphere.” 
—E/MERSON. 


When Jenny Lind, the great singer, was in this 
country, she complained of the concert halls; that they 
did not give her voice enough room; that there was not 
space enough to unroll her voice; and she even exulted 
when she found great halls over railroad stations, and 
even the waiting-room because of their immensities. 
Jenny Lind’s voice was ordained to great immensi- 
ties. To be ordained to great immensities is one of 
God’s gifts to the spacious souls of the world. 

God’s gift to Jenny Lind, a singing throat—a great 
organ of sound, ordained her to immensities. That 
voice found not its habitat in parlors and ante-rooms. 
It needed great spaces in which to unroll. 

A Leviathan needs the sea to wallow in. It would 
fill up a pond, and it would crowd a Lake Erie. God 
made the sea for Leviathans to have room in. 

It is always thrilling to a human soul to stand in 


247 


248 ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LIFE 


great immensities. To stand in the spacious reaches 
of a St. Peter’s and to look up into that great dome 
above is to feel the stir of spaciousness. And, back 
of that great immensity is Michael Angelo, a man of 
spacious soul. He was ordained to do great things 
because he had great things in his soul. 

No man or woman can look upon a Pacific Ocean, 
with its seven-thousand-mile highway of turbulent, 
tumbling, tumultuous, storm-tossed waters, without 
feeling the thrill of immensities. No wonder the 
woman from an inland town, who was visiting the 
ocean for the first time, said, upon being asked her 
first impressions: “ It’s the first time I ever saw any- 
thing there was enough of.” 

The Grand Canyon is one of the immensities of 
this earth; and that is the reason why a look into 
this abyss of beauty and wonder thrills our souls. 
It is because our souls were made for the great 
immensities. 

We like to read about that six-mile-deep hole in 
the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Japan. We 
like to think that a Mt. Everest could be dumped into 
that hole, and a Woolworth Building on top of it, and 
the two giants be buried hundreds of feet in that watery 
grave; so deep that ships could pass over the peak of 
the tower and not be ripped open. 

One likes to go through the Mammoth Cave. The 
very name thrills us. It is our size. We like the 
calibre of that bore. It just suits us. We like to 
frame our lips to thunder that word, Mammoth. But 
to spend several days traveling through this unending 


WILLIAM L. STIDGER 249 


series of underground caverns; one hundred thousand 
miles of by-ways and tunnels in this cave region of 
Kentucky—that is an adventure in spaciousness. Our 
souls are framed to such. We are at home with the 
immensities, for we have spacious souls. We have 
been “ Ordained to Eternal Life.” 

Emerson says: “The mind delights in immense 
time; delights in rocks, in metals, in mountain-chains, 
and in the evidence of vast geological periods which 
give these; in the age of trees, say the Sequoias, a 
few of which will span the whole history of mankind; 
in the noble toughness and imperishableness of the 
palm-tree, which thrives under abuse; delights in 
architecture, whose building lasts so long-——‘ A house,’ 
says Ruskin, ‘is not in its prime until it is five hun- 
dred years old —and here are the Pyramids which 
have as many thousands, and cromlechs and earth- 
mounds much older than these.” 

These gigantic physical things inspire great rhapso- 
dies in the heart of mankind, from the humblest to the 
loftiest; because it might be said of man, when he is 
in the presence of these immensities: 


“He heard a voice none else could hear 
From centered and from errant sphere.” 


Because he is ‘‘ Ordained to Eternal Life.” 


THE BIBLE IS A BOOK OF IMMENSITIES FOR 
SPACIOUS SOULS 
The story of Creation is a story of great spacious- 
ness. It took the whole universe as a setting for 


250 ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LIFE 


Creation. Sky, earth, sea and space were needed. 
The Book of Genesis is a spacious thing because it 
deals with the immensities of the creation of the earth, 
the sea, the sky, the things that fly in the sky, the 
things that swim in the sea, the things that live on the 
earth—aye, even to the colossal-brained thing called 
man, rising to his feet, looking spacious things in the 
eyes: the sky, and storms, and stars, and God, and 
eternity. When God made man in His own image in 
the story of the first dawning, He made a spacious soul 
fit to look into the immensities of life; the greatest of 
which are God and Eternity. 

In fact, the Bible is a book of immensities. The 
story of the Exodus of the Children of Israel is a 
racial movement. When you get an entire race of 
people up and moving—that is a thing of immensi- 
ties. We get some idea of the bigness of this racial 
movement started by Moses when we see that gigantic 
motion picture, “The Ten Commandments.” When 
we see Moses on Sinai, receiving the Commandments, 
see the lightning shrieking through the sky bombard- 
ing those great cliffs of stone with moral tenets, there 
is a suggestion of those immensities of life that always 
fit in with the spaciousness of the human soul, and its 
divine Father. When we get to dealing with the story 
of Creation, with time, skies, seas, earth, stars, racial 
movements and chronicles of people, we are dealing 
with the immensities; and that is the kind of stuff with 
which the Bible is filled from cover to cover. It is 
the Book of immensities written for the spacious souls 
of mankind. 


WILLIAM L. STIDGER 251 


The Holy Land is a little toy-land; small in pro- 
portions, miniature in size, but out of its limited 
borders came the hope of the world, the universal 
dream of mankind, and that is an immense thing which 
dominates the earth and the future. 

The great movements of the Bible, the great dramas, 
needed all out-of-doors for a setting. Creation; the 
Flood; the Exodus; the Tower of Babel; the Elijah 
Whirlwind; Storm; Prairie Fire and Earthquake all 
of an afternoon; Job, the world’s greatest Drama of 
Human Life; the Book of Revelation; the Life of 
Jesus; the Carpenter of Nazareth—there is something 
infinitely spacious about them all. They require great 
immensities for a setting. The Bible is a book of 
such immensities that we are appalled by them. They 
are the great immensities for the spacious souls, the 
souls ‘‘ Ordained to Eternal Life.” 


MAN’S MIND IS BUILT FOR SPACIOUS THINGS 


Man responds to spaciousness; he is framed for 
immensities; he is ordained to eternity. 

Thomas Carlyle once said, as he stood on the sea- 
shore with his black cape flying in the wind, and his 
grey hair tossed and sea-wet; as he looked in imagi- 
nation back into the past as far as creation; and as 
he projected his soul out beyond the Dog Star, and 
as he delved with his keen eyes into the bowels of the 
earth: ‘‘Man! Stands he not at the center of immensi- 
ties, at the conflux of eternities? ” Carlyle knew that 
man was “‘ Ordained for Eternity.”” He was one who 
stood and said: 


252 ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LIFE 


“He heard a voice none else could hear 
From centered and from errant sphere.” 

I have noticed frequently that great men, as Emer- 
son says, do not shine in private conversation, or in a 
small room; but give them a great hall and a great 
occasion, and they rise like giants. To quote the exact 
words of Emerson, I add: ‘‘ But give such a man a 
commanding occasion and the inspiration of a great 
multitude and he surprises by new and unlooked-for 
powers.” ‘Then he adds a graphic figure: “ Before he 
was as out of place and as unfitted as a cannon in a 
parior.” 

When man stands naked in a prize ring, or broad- 
breasting the breakers of an angry sea, in the armor 
of a life guard; or when he stands at bat with a great 
club in his hands; or when he stands before an audi- 
ence of twenty-five thousand people on the top of Mt. 
Rubudeau, he is at home and in his element, like a 
lion in the desert. 

When you see him in his element, with some- 
thing big enough to do, an environment big enough 
to house him, and a stage large and ample enough 
to stride and gesture on, you feel about him as 
Emerson says of Guizot: “ What Guizot learned this 
morning he has the air of having known from all 
eternity.” 

Why? 

Answer: Because some men are moulded in the 
mould of a mountain canyon, breathed upon by the 
cool winds of the seas, cast forth by an earthquake, 
and the mould destroyed in the grip of a volcano, sent 


WILLIAM L. STIDGER 253 


by God for that specific purpose. For he is ‘‘ Ordained 
for Eternity ”; and 


“ He heard a voice none else could hear 
From centered and from errant sphere.” 


Some wise person has said: ‘“ If your eye is on the 
Eternal, your intellect will grow.” That exactly sums 
up for me the thought of this part of my sermon. 
That is exactly why man’s mind grows; because man’s 
mind is always, consciously or subconsciously, on the 
Eternal. We think the Eternal, we dream the Eternal, 
we pray with the Eternal in our hearts and on our lips, 
we live for the Eternal, we plan for the Eternal, we 
act as if we were of the Eternal, and finally, we lie 
down and die, with great expectations that we shall 
awake sweeping out into the eternal on the wings of 
the “‘ Winds before the dawn.” 

No wonder man’s intellect grows so rapidly. No 
wonder he, whose mind was an animal mind a few 
short 2ons ago, is now a walking creature, an upright 
being that can look God, the skies and the stars of 
dawn in the face; a man “ Ordained to the Eternal.” 


CHRIST’S DREAMS AND TEACHINGS, AND HIS LIFE 
WERE SPACIOUS 


His birth was a spacious thing amid a spacious set- 
ting. He had the sky for the dome of His birth-place. 
He had an angel choir for His heralds, and He had a 
star to guide Him to the earth and to announce His 
coming. His birth had to do with the immensities of 
time and space. 


254 ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LIFE 


He lived and walked, and died in spacious settings, 
for He lived in the out-of-doors all His days. He was 
seldom in-doors. He loved the mountains and the 
hanging stars. He loved the rugged trails, and crooned 
like a stream of prayer through the valleys. He 
prayed at night on mountain-tops because He liked to 
hear answer from the ‘‘ Errant spheres.” He loafed 
with fisherfolk beside blue Galilee. He was cramped 
in-doors; and the only time He ever went into the 
Temple in spectacular-réle to preach, He felt so suffo- 
cated and so bound-in, that He bulged out the giant 
shoulders of His wrath and literally rent the walls of 
the Temple apart so that all the world could see its 
inner filth and cess-pools. 

Jesus was an out-of-doors man, partly by preference 
and mostly by pre-ordination. God had such things 
for Jesus to do that He needs must have all the out-of- 
doors to do them in. That was His “ appropriate set- 
ting’ to stage the events through, and in which He 
walked and stalked with tremendous tread. 

He taught of a spacious kingdom, and lifted religion 
to new immensities. He gave religion and the king- 
dom, about which He talked, an international scope. 

Some prophet, whose name I have now forgotten, 
said something that gives him a right to be forgotten. 
One can afford to be forgotten if he leaves such 
thoughts behind as his immortality in the hearts of 
men: “ Jesus explains nothing, but the influence of 
Him took people out of time, and they felt eternal. A 
great integrity makes us immortal.” 

Yes, Jesus took people out of time and they felt 


WILLIAM L. STIDGER O55 


eternal. Why did Jesus do this noble thing? Because 
He knew that human beings were, by God, His Father, 
‘“‘ Ordained to Eternal Life.” And how did Jesus know 
to do this thing? Answer: 


“He heard a voice none else could hear 
From centered and from errant sphere.” 


THE CHRIST CALLS US TO A SPACIOUS LIFE 


) 


‘““Come up higher” seems to be the slogan of His 
spiritual message. He is calling up to more spacious 
living and to greater immensities of thought. God 
Himself gave Christ in that spirit; ‘‘ For God so loved 
the world that he gave his only begotten Son.” There 
was nothing small about that idea. There was nothing 
puny in God’s mind. It was “ The World ” that inter- 
ested Him—that tugged at His heart-strings. There 
is a world-note in all of God’s dealings with human- 
kind. Let the one hundred per centers take no com- 
fort out of this: and those who would cut out of 
civilization’s benefits those of another color, or curve 
of cheek-bone, or kink of hair. God’s Son was given 
for ‘The World.” 

Then Jesus in turn immediately trumpeted to the 
world His meaning and His message when He said, 
‘““T am come that ye might have life and that ye might 
have it more abundantly.” 

“Life”? and “ Abundance” are words that suggest 
great immensities, and spacious things of the soul; 
such as had never thrilled humanity’s hope hereto- 
fore. Here was a man talking, who knew that man 
was “ Ordained for Eternity.” 


256 ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LIFE 


Christ, too, talked clearly and positively of a ‘“ Spir- 
itual”’ kingdom, and not of a ‘“ Material” kingdom. 
He was dealing in new immensities then. He was 
lifting His world into more spacious skies of the soul. 
He talked about a spiritual kingdom as confidently 
and as unconsciously as most men talk of England, 
Germany, Russia and the United States, and more so. 
He was dealing in new immensities, in things eternal. 
He had no time to waste in bitterness, in revenge, in 
defending His personal dignity. He had no time for 
“getting back ” at people and “ saving His face.” He 
had no time to hate. He knew, with my dear friend, 
Edwin Markham, that there is no time to hate: 


“There is no time for hate, O wasteful friend; 
Put away hate until the ages end. 
Have you an ancient wound? Forget the wrong 


Out in my West a forest, loud with song 
Towers high and green over a field of snow, 
Over a glacier buried far below.” 


Men who have learned their divine kinship; that 
they have been, from the beginning, if they wish to 
accept this inheritance, “‘ Ordained for Eternity ”’; 
men who live in these spacious soul-skies; men who 
inhabit these immensities, know that hate is such a 
puny thing; and that they haven’t time for such. They 
live in the lofty regions: 


“As some tall cliff that lifts tts mighty form 
Swells from the vale and mid-way leaves the storm, 
While ’round its breast, the rolling clouds are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head!” 


WILLIAM L. STIDGER 257 


Such are these men of the great immensities; these 
men “‘ Ordained for Eternity.” 

And almost the last word that Jesus left was like 
unto the words spoken of His own coming to the earth. 
He told His disciples to go “ Unto all the world, and 
preach.” There was nothing local, or provincial about 
that command! There was no racial intolerance in 
that message! 

And finally, He brought the thought of immortality 
to earth. The Egyptians did not have it. The Baby- 
lonians were frightened about it. The Hebrews were 
timid about it. But Jesus talked it, taught it, brought. 
it and proved it on Easter morning long ago. He came 
that we might have eternal life. He came that we 
might know to the full that we were “ Ordained for 
Eternal life ’—-we who would accept it. 

An Arabian caliph who died as far back as 845, 
hoped, and dreamed, and prayed in the darkness of 
uncertainty: ‘‘O thou whose kingdom never passes, 
pity one whose dignity is so transient! ” 

In his essay on “ Immortality,’ Emerson tells of 
two of his friends who were in the United States Con- 
gress. Both were men of great distinction, men of 
intellect, and they took an active part in the life of 
their day and generation. These two friends in Con- 
gress, in addition to attending well to their duties, often 
got together to talk over the things of earth and im- 
mortality. When one of them left Congress the two 
were separated for twenty-five years. Then finally 
they saw each other through open doors, at a distance, 
in a crowded reception room at the President’s house 


258 ORDAINED TO ETERNAL LIFE 


in Washington. Slowly they advanced toward each 
other, as they could make their way through the great 
crowd of brilliant people, until, at last they came face 
to face, grasped hands, said nothing; but shook hands 
long and cordially. 

At last his friend said, ‘‘ Any light, Albert? ” 

“None! ” said Albert. ‘‘ Any light, Lewis? ” 

‘““None! ” said Lewis, and they parted, never to 
meet again, as the crowd swerved around them and 
closed in, and separated them. It was a sad parting. 

But, there 1s light. We cry out this day: “ Any 
light, God?” And the answer comes back through 
the gloom, ‘‘ As many as were ordained to eternal life 
believed.” 

“ Any/light, friend? ” 

Answer: “ Yes, light eternal! Light through Jesus 
Christ. He came that we might have light and life 
abundant, and that we might swell in the immensities. 
This is His message, ‘ If I be lifted up, I will draw all 
men unto me ’—into soul spaciousness forever.” 

Jesus knew that we humans were “ Ordained to 
Eternal Life.” How did He know? 

He knew because 


“He heard a voice none else could hear 
From centered and from errant sphere.” 


WRAY HR 


We thank Thee, God, that we were ordained for eter- 
nity. Lord God, our Light, Love and Laughter: In the 
holy hush of the happy hour we come to Thine altars to 
thank Thee that Thou art our Pacific Ocean, our Grand 
Canyon, and our Spacious Skies. Thou art the God of 


ik. F - 


Ce De 


WILLIAM L. STIDGER 259 


“beauty, bread and brotherhood.’ Thou art the God of 
our wmmensities, and our imaginings. Thou art our 
nights, star-filled; and our dawns, sun-lit. Thou art our 
noons of peace and quiet; and Thou art our splendid sun- 
sets of golden beauty, dripping with rose and amber. 
Thou art the ocean over which we sail for interminable 
days; the canyon into which we peer with awe and won- 
der; the skies to which we look for guidance and light. 

Through these, Thy handiworks, we learn that we were 
ordained for Eternity; and for that thrilling thought we 
thank Thee. It hushes our hearts like the sound of music 
at twilight. Amen. 


A SIVA AWA satis 
aay) phi VC 


' 


he 


Wy 
i 
‘AN ie 
iy 
Ma 
eat 





ROBERT WHITE 


Bannockburn, Scotland, made famous by the signal vic- 
tory of Robert Bruce, is the place of the birth of Robert 
White, receiving his education at Dunoon College and the 
Scottish Baptist Theological College, affiliated with Glas- 
gow University. His pastorates in Scotland were at 
Leith and Alexandria, at which time he was President of 
the Edinburgh Ministers’ Union, the Christian Endeavor 
Union of Edinburgh, and was Vice-President of the Scot- 
tish National Endeavor. His last pastorate before coming 
to Detroit was at the First Baptist Church of Brantford, 
Ontario. The Northwestern Baptist Church, where he is 
now located, is situated in the largest protestant section of 
Detroit, in what is known as the Grand River Avenue dis- 
trict. This church is notable for its work among men and 
boys; and under the wise and capable leadership of its 
present minister is making large contributions to this all 
important part of the city life. ‘This sermon is character- 
istic of the writer, and reveals the secret of his hold on 
men. ‘There is devotion and challenge in it—an irrestible 
appeal to the sacrificial spirit. 


LIFTING THE LOAD—The true minister is a source 
of inspiration. Hts life is continually steeped in God. He 
appropriates those qualities of head and heart which are 
in Him; and then hands them on to a people through a 
living personality. Life ts severe. Weare richer than our 
fathers, yet we have more care. The modern minster 
must so preach that people will be put into a heartened 
attitude toward God and life; and, tackling the problems, 
temptations, and duties in a hopeful and masterful way, 
will transform them into rich food for powerful and spir- 
itual personality. He, who brings Christ to men as the 
burden sharer, 1s wise, for he brings to them the dignity 
and the strength of human life ennobled by the spirit of 
Christ—RoBERT WHITE. 


a 


AV IIT 


THE CHRISTIAN AS A VICTORIOUS 
PERSONALITY 


ROBERT WHITE 
Northwestern Baptist Church 


“ Thanks be unto Bvui: which always causeth us to triumph in 
Christ.”—II Cor. 2 


In this sermon I express my own convictions regard- 
ing some problems of Christian living that might be 
more easily solved if we were greater and more victori- 
ous personalities. 

A victorious personality is one who is sure of his 
relationships with God in Christ, who knows the range 
of his own powers, who is in complete possession of the 
spiritual treasures embedded in the Bible, who has real 
control over his faculties. He has no kinship with 
the divided self or the sick soul described by Prof. 
James in his Varieties of Religious Experiences. He 
is neither rent, torn, nor distracted, but so organized 
in his life as to achieve victory in every spiritual un- 
dertaking. His qualities are positive; and the expres- 
sion of his character is as definite as his qualities. 
Defects of disposition are dealt with as trainers deal 
with vices in thoroughbred horses, for such defects 
undermine power. He understands that Christian 
work partakes the nature of his personality; that de- 


263 


264 A VICTORIOUS PERSONALITY 


fective personality means defective work; and that a 
strong and positive personality does strong and effec- 
tive work. He knows that no Christian can put into 
his work what is not in his personality, any more than 
he can take out of his will what is not found there, and 
that a shallow personality will do shallow and slip-shod 
work to the end of his days. 


I 


Now, take the victorious personality in relation to 
literature. I do not say that it is necessary to know 
the connection between chemical constitution and 
physiological action, or the principal perturbations of 
the solar system, or even the ancient classics, to be a 
victorious personality; but I do say that it is necessary 
to know the Bible, and the Bible is literature supreme. 
In this literature we have the record of a progressive 
revelation of God given as man was able to receive it, 
and a record of the “redemption that is in Christ 
Jesus.” We cannot be victorious in the spiritual life 
and remain intellectually sluggish. We cannot live 
the life of faith in the Son of God with untrembling 
assurance, unless these truths have become part of the 
texture of our intellectual and spiritual life. Power 
comes from being sure of facts, and when these facts 
are of the highest order they beget in us a flush of 
confidence which is always a preface to victory. It is 
then truer of us than it was of James Watt when he 
discovered the power and uses of steam, we have power 
to sell. 

One outstanding feature of the Bible is the grand 


ROBERT WHITE 265 


stream of intellectual and spiritual energy which seems 
to pour forth from inexhaustible fountains. The 
writers are men of commanding and imperishable 
force; their intellectual march is stately and their 
powers have a wide range; they deal with the infinite 
as well as with the finite. Therefore, a Christian’s in- 
tellect, through which his ransomed soul pours all it 
contains of God, can be keen with the keenness of the 
mind of God, accurate with His accuracy, and forceful 
with the throb of that infinite life which pulses in His 
infinite brain. 

The victorious personality must have as the key- 
words of his life—progress, freedom, growth, and 
power. No sponge he, to absorb, to bloat, to die, but 
a being united in living mental attachment to every 
realm of this vast, vivid, varied, teeming universe. It 
is his to develop intellect to its supreme pitch of power; 
his to grapple in severe application with the great 
truths of revelation and redemption; it is his to assimi- 
late that strong mental food which nourished the brain 
of Jesus, and which produces a life which carries the 
Church of God to victory. 

The Church of Christ demands members of mag- 
netic personality, of magnetic thought, with light in 
their imaginations, and whose logic is on fire; members » 
who are vigorous thinkers, who carry into their life 
and work the freshness of a growing mind, the energies 
of a capable manhood. The New Testament urges 
that we grow up into the measure of the stature of 
the fullness of Christ, filled with the fullness of God. 

Harold Begbie says of Christians that we must 


266 A VICTORIOUS PERSONALITY 


\ either become the greatest of people, or the most me- 
‘chanical and pharisaic. If in touch with divine reali- 
ties, they shape us in spite of ourselves. We walk in 
the light of heaven, breathe its atmosphere, and are 
molded by its mighty powers. Like a gladdening river, 
heaven’s life flows through us. There is nothing 
withered or barren, or numb in our faculties; no un- 
hallowed sleep rests upon any power. Thought and 
speech are lit by light divine, for the mind is the radi- 
ant scene of the operation of divine thought. Tempta- 
tions to idleness are occasions of triumph, and over 
every day floats the banner of accomplished tasks. 
We are more than conquerors over intellectual feeble- 
ness and death. 


II 


We must also be victorious in the realm of the heart. 
Life will make our hearts either big and hospitable 
as the heart of God, or partial and narrow as that of 
a village gossip. There are customs that strive to 
forbid free play between the Christian’s soul and the 
Christian’s God. We are required to do team-work 
with those who esteem etiquette more highly than 
spirituality, who positively will not allow the regnant 
ideas of the Gospel to govern them. There are those 
whose moral and intellectual convictions clash with 
ours, and who cannot clash without suspicion and bit- 
terness. ‘There is the struggle to enforce opinions, — 
exert influences, establish customs—there is the con- 
scious or unconscious struggle for mastery. Amid all 
these shall we retain our delicate sympathy? Shall 


ROBERT WHITE 267 


we be saved from all unwise severity, all harshness of 
judgment? Shall we issue from the struggle with a 
roomier heart in which even our bitterest opponents 
shall know that they have a hospitable place? We are 
Christ’s servants, friends, disciples, and representa- 
tives, therefore we must crush, eliminate, and expel 
every tendency to be narrower in sympathy, love, hos- 
pitality, richness of pure feeling than the heart of 
Jesus; and we must resolutely cultivate the meekness 
of Jesus, which was the restraint of a most richly en- 
dowed personality, who had the power to be silent 
when smitten. This is the power that breaks sin and 
unifies the hearts of Christian people; the power that 
refines the soul and creates a beauty of behavior that 
wins others to Christ. 

It is so easy to defend ourselves by a hard strength, 
but difficult to keep the heart soft, sensitive, and 
strong. It is easy to get hard when dealing with the 
hard; coarse when associated with the vulgar; bitter 
when misunderstood and maligned. This destroys our 
Christ-like disposition, power, serviceableness. We 
are kept big and broad and deep in love and sympathy 
by entering into fellowship with the disposition of 
Christ, who endured the contradiction of sinners, who 
resisted unto blood, yet remained unspoiled, and was 
able to bless and to save the very men who put Him 
to death. When we are saved from the sins that spoil 
our fellowship with God, we shall also be saved from 
the sins that spoil fellowship with one another. The 
breaking of our unworthy pride, the burning out of all 
that is mean and selfish, the destruction of all fretful- 


268 A VICTORIOUS PERSONALITY 


ness and unworthy fears, the utter annihilation of 
unholy ambition, the earnest cultivation of gentleness, 
pity, fairness and holiness of life will give us a com- 
manding place in the affection of God and true men, 
and will be a sure defense against the unclean purposes 
of any heart. We are disciples of Christ who accepted 
the unwelcome and the unpalatable in His own life, 
and who teaches us how to make these issue in fine 
devotion and noble character. It is ours, then, to be 
skilled in the art of drawing His mighty power into our 
impotent hearts, so that we may become masters over 
the desire to become avenged on those who do us harm. 

Thus shall we enter more fully into the experience 
of His mastery over things mental, moral, material, 
and into the mystery of His death and resurrection. 
The sense of our relation to Christ will fill us always 
with a saving self-respect, with a love that does not 
behave itself unseemly, and that makes the life as 
glorious as the Christ to whom it is related. It is 
when the marks of Christ are discernible in our char- 
acters that even the wicked stand in awe of us. The © 
life that has the sweetness of love, the dignity of grace, 
the strength that is gentle, the courage that is win- 
some, the words that are pure and wholesome, the 
disposition that is sunny, the touch that is sympathetic 
will ever endear itself to those who love Christians 
from whom all ill-feeling and unchristlikeness are 
washed away. 


III 
There is yet another realm in which the Christian 


ROBERT WHITE 269 


must be victorious if his life is to be of any lasting 
consequence—the realm of prayer. Would it be put- 
ting it too strongly to say that failure is due to power- 
lessness with God in prayer, this powerlessness issuing 
from defects of disposition? The glossing over of 
secret faults continues until we lose the boldness of 
sincerity. In this awful realm lie stupendous powers 
that have constantly moved the world forward on 
moral and spiritual lines. How shall these powers be 
transferred to us, operate in us, and through us, upon 
others? By severe discipline of character in the pres- 
ence of God. Character is the basis of prayer—of 
successful praying—the measure of our power. A 
defective character means defective praying. God 
deals with realities in our lives, and relates Himself 
to these realities. He desireth truth in the inward 
parts. A false life cannot reveal a true God. A vacil- 
lating will cannot express the energy of an omnipotent 
will. We cannot import into our praying moments 
what is not ordinarily in our characters; therefore, a 
disciplined character forged and hammered into har- 
mony with the will of God as revealed in Scripture, 
and enriched by the wealthy content of the spirit’s 
life, is the character that triumphs in this holy sphere. 
Perseverance, intensity, self-discipline, concentration 
are the marks of the conqueror here. God’s refusal 
to give except on the basis of a character in harmony 
with His word and spirit, produces in the aspirant for 
mastery the noblest kind of character. “If ye abide 
in me, and my words abide in you, ye shall ask what 
ye will and it shall be done unto you.” 


270 A VICTORIOUS PERSONALITY 


Mirabeau says, ‘‘ Nothing is impossible to the man 
who can will.” Wecan will to get rid of our conscious 
insincerities that make prayer a modern species of in- 
cantation; and we can will to make our demands on 
God, for life and service, keep step with the growth of 
our characters, and our characters keep step with'our 
demands upon God, so that our life may thrill with 
vital force. We must, if we are to please God, have 
the character that is at once kingly and priestly. This 
character must rest upon and grow up from the bed- 
rock of reality. It receives its honor, prestige, glory, 
not from wealth, learning, position, but from its naked 
association with God. The power and glory born of 
this holy association are unique, inimitable, enduring. 
This priestly character is fashioned by the conscious- 
ness of its call to be a channel of Christ’s fullness to 
the world, and the realization that we hear the world’s 
need to Christ. 

How shall this character be brought to the highest 
plane of usefulness? Train it. Work out your own 
salvation—for it is God who worketh in you. By the 
most ruthless self-discipline bring every thought, de- 
sire, feeling, propensity into subjection to Christ. 
Napoleon said that “ impossible ” is a word found only 
in the dictionary of fools. Jesus says, ‘‘ Nothing shall 
be impossible unto you.” Surely if Napoleon could 
get men to undertake forced marches without boots, 
win battles without cannon, perform prodigies of valor 
under his inspiration, Jesus Christ can inspire us to 
be greater men and to do greater deeds, even though 
they be in the moral and spiritual sphere. 


ROBERT WHITE 271 


To be at home amid the sanctities of God, to move 
harmoniously there, to know what God permits in re- 
lation to His will and omnipotence, and to realize that 
fully in one’s own experience is to be master and king 
in every relation here. To achieve this we must con- 
centrate the purpose, focus the desire, select the path 
and tread it, control the emotions, bring truant atten- 
tion to task, harness the intellect and stop dissipating 
energy. The kingdom of heaven cometh not through 
committees, but through holy personality. Therefore 
concentrate, concentrate, concentrate. To perfect one- 
self here, to be master here, is to make life victorious 
in every other sphere. Crush every unregulated im- 
pulse, discipline every desire, chain every wandering 
fancy, follow the definite choice and life will be filled 
with the full power of God. By making large use of 
the Word and Spirit we can become those whom God 
will trust with the treasures of the eternal life for our 
sin-crippled fellows. 

Turner, the painter, said: ‘I have no secret but 
hard work. Labor changes the world from ugliness 
to beauty.” ‘‘ The world belongs to the energetic,” 
said Emerson. It is so here. “ The kingdom of 
heaven suffereth violence and the violent take it by 
force.” Shape yourself and you shape others. Obey 
God and others will obey you. Be king over your own 
life and you will rule others. Be living enough to die - 
as a grain of wheat dies, and you will find your life 
again amplified, and enriched with the life of God. 

Brethren, it is true that people of like passions 
with ourselves have wielded uncanny powers through 


272 A VICTORIOUS PERSONALITY 


prayer. So may we. Pay the price and you will get 
the treasure. This treasure is in earthen vessels. Put 
to death every passion of flesh and spirit that will not 
harmonize with God’s will, and you will be filled with 
God. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. 
There is, then, a community of life, power, interest, 
grace, goodness, glory; and our characters bear a pre- 
cision of resemblance to the character of Jesus Christ. 


RRAYVER 
Father, Thou art our life, our only source of wealth and 
power. Work into our spirits the qualitees of Thy life, 
so that as the flowers put on garments of gold, crimson, 
and purple through their association with the light, our 
spirits may be clothed with love, peace, and power through 
their union with Christ. Amen. 


ROBERT WILLIAM WOODROOFE 


Ingersoll, Ontario, is the birthplace of Robert William 
Woodroofe. The University of Toronto graduated him 
in 1902 and Kings College granted him the degree of M.A. 
in 1905. Later he took two years of graduate work at 
Columbia, majoring in sociology. In 1903 he was or- 
dained Priest in the Protestant Episcopal Church. His 
later pastorates have been in New York, Philadelphia, and 
Cleveland. It was in the latter city that he was rector of 
the Immanuel Church from 1912 to 1922, accomplishing 
an outstanding piece of social ministry. For the past 
three years he has been rector at old St. John’s, one of the 
several downtown churches in Detroit which refuse to 
live on their traditions. The major emphasis in his attrac- 
tive and constructive preaching is placed on the many im- 
plications of the social teachings of Jesus; and under his 
inspiring leadership St. John’s is working out one of the 
most varied and effective service programs in the city, giv- 
ing opportunity for many outside groups doing construc- 
tive work to function through the free use of the church 
and parish house. His fellows have honored him this year 
by electing him recently to the Presidency of the Greater 
Detroit Council of Religious Education and also of the 
Detroit Pastors’ Union. 


2 


LIFE’S GREATEST VENTURE—When I entered 
college, it was with the practice of Law in mind; but dur- 
ing my college course my thought was turned to the Chris- 
tian nunistry. All through my life I had been interested 
in the things of God;-but I have a firm conviction that 
there ts no vocation in life that provides greater opportu- 
nity for service in behalf of one’s fellows than does the 
Christian ministry. The need of the world was never 
greater than tt is today. The solution to the problems of 
our vexed modern civilization will be found in Christ, and 
in Christ alone. It is my firm conviction that when men 
come to an understanding of God’s universal Fatherhood 
and of the Brotherhood of Man we shall see the establtsh- 
ing of the Kingdom. To be a Kingdom Builder is the 
finest venture of life. The mintstry needs a passion for 
men. We must believe that the gospel of Jesus has lost 
nothing of its power to attract, and must be able to say, 
“TI am not ashamed of .the gospel of Christ, for it ts the 
power of God unto salvation.” 

—Rosert WILLIAM WooprooFE. 


ALX 
THE MASTER'S COMPASSION 


ROBERT WILLIAM WOODROOFE 
St. John’s Protestant Episcopal Church 


“And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was 
moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep 
not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many 
things.”—Mark 6: 34. 


The sight of a crowd is always impressive to any 
human soul who stands and watches it. It may be 
of any sort and gathered on any occasion. So today 
a great crowd is gathered, and as Jesus gazes upon it 
His great heart is moved with compassion. I like this 
word compassion. It means suffering with another; 
hence, sorrow or pity for another’s distress or mis- 
fortunes. It suggests sympathy for, or kindred feel- 
ing with. It is more than pity; it is pity in action. 
How characteristic it is of the Master, Who Himself 
took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses. 

He is lost in meditation and prayer; having sought 
to be alone with God in the silence. But all at once 
He becomes conscious of the presence of the great 
shepherdless crowd. He lifts up His eyes, and there 
is a quick response to their mute appeal. He looks 
down into their upturned eyes, and immediately gives 
Himself in answer to their claim. From that moment 
He is theirs—not even His desire for prayer must make 


275 


276 THE MASTER’S COMPASSION 


Him deaf and blind to human life appealing to Him, 
and seeking His help. Any day the murmur of the 
crowd would draw Him from the silence of the hillside. 
At once He feels the impulse of service when He con- 
fronts the world’s manifold need. 

The crowd, upon which He gazes today, represents 
a cross-section of human society. Try and picture, if 
you will, the various reasons that had brought it to- 
gether. Many undoubtedly are come because they 
hope to see some miracle done by Him; for the fame 
of Him had penetrated to the most distant hamlet. 
They had heard how the blind had received their 
sight; how He had made the lame to walk; how the 
lepers had been cleansed; how the dead had been 
raised to life. They seek Him out today in the hope 
that He will manifest His power. It is curiosity that 
has brought them hither. Some undoubtedly are come 
because a hope has filtered into their hearts, that if 
He has healed others of their diseases then why not 
them? To experience His healing gift, they are present 
with Him today. It may be they do not need that gift 
for themselves, but are seeking it for a relative or a 
friend. Again, some are come hither because some 
great sorrow is laid upon their hearts. They know 
that He has a message of comfort for the sad, and 
they are anxious to hear it from His own lips. Finally, 
many are come because of a consciousness of sin. 
Standing there before Him today they are seeking His 
word of forgiveness, for they have heard how He has 
said to a paralytic, ‘‘Son, be of good cheer, thy sins 
are forgiven thee, go and sin no more.” What a pic- 


ROBERT WILLIAM WOODROOFE 277 


ture is presented to Him of human sorrow, sickness 
and sin. As then, so today, the need of the world is 
indescribably great, and Jesus proposes to Himself that 
He will satisfy it. 

Thus Jesus looks out upon the crowded world with 
reverence and with pity. Not only does He see the 
crowd; but He sees the individual as well. And when 
He sees men it is with a sense of danger and of hope. 
But as He sees them, He determines with Himself 
that He will consecrate His whole being to their 
service. It was true then, it is true today, that 
“The Son of Man came not to be ministered unto 
but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for 
the many.” If we could but see life as He saw it, 
we would consecrate ourselves to the service of hu- 
manity, and in a measure share in His Saviourship. 
For it is part of His redemptive plan for the world to 
use men. 


“Christ has no hands but our hands 
To do His work today: 
He has no feet but our feet, 
To lead men in His way. 
He has no tongues but our tongues, 
To tell men how He died: 
He has no help but our help 
To bring them to His side.” 


Jesus values men, and this is the reason for His 
compassion. Every individual in that crowd that day 
was of intense value in the eyes of heaven. He sees 
infinite possibilities in every human soul. He knows 
that ‘‘ Man is made for the infinite.’ In His day He 


278 THE MASTER’S COMPASSION 


drew a contrast between a man and a sheep. He 
knew that in the average thinking of most men of His 
time, a sheep was estimated of more value than a man; 
for a sheep stood for property, or that which we get 
for our own profit. The valuations that we give to 
things today have not changed much; for the thought 
of “ getting ” rather than of “ being ”’ is still dominant 
in human life. What shall it profit? is the first ques- 
tion that we ask. In our search for things we often 
throw human life into the discard, and consider a 
sheep as of more value than a man. , 

The value of a man’s life is uppermost in the mind 
of Jesus. The development of a character is of first 
importance. Even though a life has been marred and 
scarred by sin it is still of infinite worth in the eyes of 
Jesus. With Him the “ Lost ” man is too valuable and 
sacred to be lost. He is in the world for social restora- 
tion and moral salvage. No human being would go to 
pieces if He could help it. Not only was He willing 
to help those who came to Him, but He proposes to 
go after those who are lost; for “The Son of Man 
came to seek and to save the lost.” When He meets 
the woman at the well of Sychar, He is seeking the 
lost. He puts His finger upon the hidden sore in her 
life. By the power of His redeeming love, He trans- 
figures her character. Going back to the city from 
which she had come, and in which she had been a 
notorious character, she becomes a preacher of right- 
eousness, and many believe because of her word. They 
could see it in her face, they could read it in her 
changed attitude toward life. Something had hap- 


ROBERT WILLIAM WOODROOFE 279 


pened, and they soon understand that she has met 
with Jesus. 

Jesus never despairs of any human life; and we 
shall be at one with the spirit of Christianity if we 
approach all men with the expectation of finding be- 
neath commonplace, sordid, or even repulsive externals, 
some qualities of love, loyalty, heroism, aspiration, or 
repentance. These qualities simply prove the divine 
in man. 

Jesus stoops to the uttermost in His mission of help. 
No blind beggar’s prayer ever went unanswered; no 
sorrowing mother ever crossed His path but to whom 
He was kind; no hurt child ever cried to Him, but 
whom He took in His arms and solaced his pain, say- 
ing, “‘ Suffer little children to come unto me, and for- 
bid them not, for of such is the kingdom of God”; 
no sinning man or woman ever knelt before Him asking 
His forgiving love but to whom He spoke the recon- 
ciling word—‘ Thy sin is forgiven thee, go and sin 
no more.” He, the great burden-bearer, lifted many . 
a load and made heavy burdens light. 

This is the very essence of the Gospel of Jesus, that 
the strong must bear the burdens of the weak. How 
different is Jesus’ message from the message of science. 
Science says let them perish; the weak jeopardize the 
species. It preaches ‘‘ The survival of the fittest.” 
But Jesus says ‘No! Seek and save the lost.” He 
preaches the survival of the most unfit. And this is 
the glory of His Gospel. But this same Gospel does 
not encourage weakness. It says be strong, make 
something of yourself; have a high ambition, for he 


280 THE MASTER’S COMPASSION 


aims too low who aims beneath the stars. In our mis- 
sion of help to the weak, we must always have a loving 
regard for human life. 

We must have a profound sense of the sacredness 
of life as it is seen from the point of view of God. 
Jesus knows that personality is the one infinitely valu- 
able thing in the universe. He has a profound convic- 
tion of God’s care for the individual. This conviction 
is based upon His knowledge that God is a father, and 
that the very essence of fatherhood is individual care 
for the children. When St. Augustine pondered this 
great truth and thought of himself as one among so 
many, he was led to exclaim, ‘“‘ He loves us every one, 
as though there were but one of us to love.” If Il am 
apt to doubt the reality of that love, and to question 
the value that God places upon my life, I turn my eyes 
to the Cross on yonder hill, and there I see in that 
Cross not only the measure of human sin, but also the 
measure of God’s love. “ For God so loved the world 
that he gave his only begotten Son.”’ When I contem- 
plate this evidence of God’s exceeding love I am lost 
in wonder, because now I know that He values me. 
It is with the thought of the Fatherhood of God in 
mind that Jesus looks out over the great shepherdless 
crowd today, and as He looks, His heart is moved with 
compassion towards them. 

And so the day wore on and He had done His full 
stint of work, for He had taught them many things 
concerning the kingdom of God. The sun is dipping 
toward the western horizon. It is well-nigh gone 
down, and the shadows of evening are creeping in. It 


/ 


ROBERT WILLIAM WOODROOFE 281 


is now that His disciples come to Him and say, ‘“‘ This 
is a desert place and now the time is far past; send 
them away, that they may go into the country round 
about, and into the villages, and buy themselves bread; 
for they had nothing to eat.”” There are great num- 
bers of them, they argued, and the day is far spent, 
and this is a desert place. And so they satisfied them- 
selves they were right in making this request of their 
Master. And they add, “ Master, you have taught 
them these many nours, tney nave no right to expect 
anything more from you. Let them go now and care 
for themselves.” 

But this is not the way compassion works; for the 
Master immediately turns and addresses Himself to 
the disciples and says, ‘“‘ Give ye them to eat.” In 
these two attitudes of mind, ‘ Send them away,” and 
‘“‘ Give them to eat,’’ we have presented to us a clear 
distinction between the human and divine points of 
view. The advice which the disciples gave to their 
Master from the moral point of view was sound. They 
were right as far as they went, but they did not go far 
enough. They would have done their duty, and duty 
is the great word to the moralist. 

But Jesus knows another word, and this word is 
love, and love is larger than duty. He has a feeling of 
responsibility for the multitude, and therefore He takes 
responsibility for them. And if we are to share in the 
Master’s compassion, as we face the world’s need, we 
must believe that love commands a wider horizon, and 
entails a heavier responsibility than duty; for love is 
the great word in the Christian vocabulary. 


282 THE MASTER’S COMPASSION 


A self-centered morality cannot save the world. 
Only a love which does not count the cost, and grows 
tender at the spectacle of human want, carries the 
spirit of Jesus. We should never forget the Master, 
Who, when He saw the multitude, took their sorrows 
and laid them upon His own heart. He felt He ought 
to help them and therefore accepts responsibility for 
them. So He turns to Philip and puts the question, 
‘“Whence are we to buy bread that these may eat? ” 
And this He says to prove him, for He Himself knew 
what He would do. And Philip answers, ‘“‘ Two hun- 
dred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them 
that every one may take a little.” 

Then it is that Andrew comes to the rescue, and 
says, ‘‘ There is a lad here who has five barley cakes 
and two small fishes ”’; but adds as he looks out over 
the great crowd—“ What are they among so many? ” 
But Jesus immediately relieves his misgiving, for He 
says, ‘‘ Bring them to me.” 

‘How true it is that these disciples were face to face 
with the same difficulties as we are today when we 
confront a great multitude that must be fed. How 
often the suggestion comes, ‘‘Send them away”; 
‘Let them buy food for themselves”’; ‘‘ What are 
these among so many; five barley cakes and two small 
fishes’; why the thing’s impossible; ‘‘ It can’t be 
done.” But let us, because of the difficulties and the 
problems which we meet, turn and ask what was the 
secret of this miracle of old? The first thing that 
strikes us is the splendid confidence of Jesus that it 
can be done. There He stands in the midst of it all, 


ROBERT WILLIAM WOODROOFE 283 


and demands that their seemingly inadequate resources 
be brought to Him. He conditions the working of the 
miracle upon the receiving from their hands of their 
humble resources. It is only when they said, ‘“‘ Take it, 
Master, take it, it is only a little thing,” and when His 
great loving hands took it and blessed it, that it went 
the round of the multitude. 

The second thing that we notice is what our Lord 
trusted His disciples to do. He gives the food to the 
disciples, and the disciples make distribution to the 
companies of fifty, which had ranged themselves on 
the green grass. Jesus did not give it directly Himself, 
but used this ministry of the disciples. As then, so 
now, He trusts men to carry out His projects. No 
one ever believed in men and trusted men as Jesus did. 

I have met, somewhere, a quaint old legend, that 
when the Lord returned to heaven the angel Gabriel 
asked Him, “ Master, did you accomplish your pur- 
pose? Did you convert all men to be citizens of the 
kingdom? ” 

“No,” He said, ‘I only founded the kingdom, and 
told a few men about it, and left it to grow.” 

‘“‘ But, Lord, how will the world know? ” 

‘Peter and James and John and the rest will teach 
them.” 

‘But they may forget, or neglect or fail.” 

“They will not fail. J am trusting them.” 

And they did not fail. It is a solemnizing thought 
that Jesus is depending upon you and me in carrying 
out the redemptive purposes of His love. Let us ask 
ourselves, ‘ Will I fail?’ Not if we do what those 


284 THE MASTER’S COMPASSION 


disciples did—bring our humble resources to Him, and 
after blessing receive them back from His hands, 
and then make distribution to the hungry multitude. 
Let us never forget that ‘“ His strength is sufficient 
for us.” 

And finally there is the resultant joy from a con- 
sciousness of a service rendered. Don’t you suppose 
there was joy in the heart of the Master that night as 
He reviewed the work of the day? No task had been 
left undone. As He saw the multitudes departing was 
He not glad that He had had them as His guests, and 
that He had been to them the Master of the Feast. 
And we, too, if we accept His challenge, and out of the 
compassion of our hearts break with the world the 
Bread of Life, which He places in our hands, shall 
experience the Master’s joy. 

There is an incident in the Life of Dr. Grenfell of 
the Labrador which will illustrate what I mean. I 
shall tell it in his own words: ‘‘ Nearly three years ago, 
I was going down south one day to answer a call in 
the winter in regard to a young boy of about sixteen, 
who had a diseased hip and thigh. A message came in 
about the middle of Sunday. It was a very urgent 
case. We started at once with the dogs, and as it was 
very urgent and the going was very good, the ice being 
hard frozen, I took a very light sledge and just a few 
other things—an axe and a rifle, and some instruments 
and started off alone. I shall never forget it. It was 
Easter Sunday, and the weather turned very bad before 
evening. I had to forego crossing an arm of the sea. 
I met a number of fishermen in a little hamlet by the 


ROBERT WILLIAM WOODROOFE 285 


side of the arm of the sea, and being Easter Sunday, 
we read about the life after death, and about how 
Christ’s body was recognized, and how His disciples 
expected to recognize one another, and about the real- 
ness that we had in our faith when life in Labrador 
or Hampstead is done. The next morning, at day- 
break, I crossed the ice, but as it so happened, the sea 
that had been in over night had broken up the ice, and 
the surface had frozen over and, without knowing it, I 
was going over ice that would not carry. I struck the 
ice with my whip and found it would not bear, but 
there was no turning round. We had to gallop as hard 
as we could, but it was no use; we all went through, 
the dogs and myself. There was nothing to do but to 
cut the dogs adrift and see if they could get ashore. 
By God’s providence one of them climbed out on to a 
piece of ice, and I had his long trace tied to me round 
one of my wrists. We got out on the ice and we drifted 
out to sea. All that night, and part of the next day, I 
drifted off out of sight of land. There was only a 
small piece of ice left, and I knew that if any moment 
the ice broke my last minute had come. But it was 
not so. By God’s providence the men had seen me 
over night. I thought then of the reality of something 
that was so real, and on looking back on life—the joy 
of having had the honor of being allowed to serve was 
so real, and the presence of God was so absolutely real, 
and practical, that it bore me up. In the morning I 
hoisted a flag. I had to kill some of the dogs because 
I was soaked through and had hardly any clothes. I 
made a flag-pole, and put up my shirt as a flag, and 


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